I am standing here myself by the kitchen table,

the facet drips in the sink...drip, drip, drip,

a familiar repellent sound.

I raise my head upwards with the final beauty

of the done deed...

here in this shabby hotel in the darkest of places

in the city, where the winos roam and  beggars die.

I walk to the room with the white shadow on a blood

splattered wall, a red hand print on the door.

i lift the hank of sticky hair from a worn chair and smell

the clotted blood.

I am filled with weariness; one man's answer to the belly pain.

My eye is a match-flame, the pain a solid lump.

Who will clean up this mess? Who?

I close my eyes in divinity and pain. No redemption...

The neighbors did not hear, they never do not with the radio

blasting out the rock and roll of a seventies tune...

Now there is no noise but a lack of sound.

i have gone deaf from the scream but the scream

was hours or days ago and the radio is unplugged and i stand in

black blood, it covers me and the bathroom is filthy and I

want to leave but stay and try to light a cigarette with shaking

hands. The room is empty except for material things...

strange to feel this cold...her gift of love too clumsy, too worn

not enough to hold me stable not in this dark place.

Why in this space of cockroaches, and stale muscatel?

The room does not answer only its broken ugliness hisses,

and where is the body, curled like a beaten infant in the corner?

Will rats devour her? There is a male insistency on meaning.

i can find no meaning in this stagnant air.

She laughed at me and my hands became weapons.

What was I doing in this shadow-land of the city?

Following what? Death! My death...

Now, i hear again the water dripping, it rips my nerves.

I am strung to a fine pitch...to know, to know not be erased

like so much dirt...dirt is here. i do not live here. Can I burn the

body in the bathtub and run the brown rust water and it will

go away? How many people on this planet starve to death

every second? What time is it? She stole my watch, the *****.

I give it all back. I give her retched life back. I am covered with

her blood and I long to be clean. Long to be rid of her rotting

stench. Who will call the police? I will. i know that as I know the

corpse because I must have wanted this. i have no understanding.

It was a surge of life i sought and only found death. My death,

her death and the world's death. Our planet will die ,just this way

with a dripping facet and a ****** shadow...

The world will die with me.