Nothing broke east today.
Night simply collapsed,
feral and bloomed
with hard ******,
dollar-a-rack billiards,
two-buck-chuck chardonnay
curling my tongue
like the tillerman's fist
that coffees, highbeams
and bitter jaw breakers
can never wash clean.

I'm not thinking grim,
but those beams only grant
fifty yards of reckoning
into the blob of night,
that gaping maw with gumdrop teeth
and ditch green eyes.

Many tongues blithering
explode like cattails,
like plug cubans,
chewed and cancerous,
like doghair teasing my uvula,
like that five second,
twenty foot,
across-the-bar romance
with the square-shoulder girl
spending no time my way,
long drawn out and vagrant.

Your coffee's getting cold, my love.
Bella curls into your knees
twitching.
What are you dreaming, my love?

Copperheads tangle in withering steam,
and I'm fifteen again,
fifteen minutes late again,
hoping the first words
on your lips are a
good morning kiss.