before we fell silent
you said, “I am going to die”
and I couldn't tell if you were being serious
and maybe you couldn’t either
and with each cigarette
those fumbling fingers tore from the box
your eyes flashed
jagged streaks of shame

and now that silence seems endless
because you are in Kentucky
and you’ve blown everything
on making sure the feeling never went away

and your dog died two weeks ago
in your new L.A. flat,
his discarded bones nestled upon a stained grey mattress,
and gnats and flies crawl over his
accusatory eyes
and blood-tinged matted fur,
and the stone mouth drips a
yellow stench that seeps through
the newly wooded floor,
and there he dies,
again and again
still,
raw,
indignant,
because you cannot go home
and look death in the face

and your drum set plays without you now
the awesome thuds still reverberate
through the earth’s worn plaster walls
and abandoned mahogany cabinets
and also in your room with the upside-down bed
and in crowded subway cars and passenger planes
and in the dusty basement where we once
made you drink the whole thing down, then hushed you up
with blank towels and sedatives,
and the sound is deafening