the coffee flowed through tales of three lovers,
all dead now, somehow  
he managed to squeeze in a live one, number four,
over apple pie with melted cheese  
she was still coming around, usually after her AA meetings
helping him fill his apartment with Lucky Strike haze  
(only woman he knew who smoked unfiltered ****)  
he did not know why she watched him drink  
maybe he was her 40 days in the desert,
tempting her with the libations
she loved more than her own flesh,  
(her son in Waukegan with his sober dad)    
maybe he was her test, he didn’t give a **** he said  
she was quiet in his bed
often, like a thief in the night,
she would be gone when he woke in the morning  
a book or two missing, ones he had read
and filled with notes, some with pages torn out
that lined his walls, even his crapper he said  
where he could stand and drain his lizard
read Ezra Pound and Elliot and ask himself  
why the **** did those guys use so many words?  
when he ate the last crumbs of his pie, he told me
he meant to ask me the same question,
but the answer would be too long,
that I asked questions that did not need answers
I tried to tell him
I felt the same way, but
he fired up another Lucky Strike,
and asked for the check
which I would pay
and I knew, he would hear nothing
I had to say

my fingers, the same fingers
that played the guitar  
I mean look at your fingers,
the same fingers you licked
after getting the sticky pale red juice
from a cherry popsicle on them  
my fingers were dug into the tall grass
my mouth, the same mouth I kissed Amelia with,
the same mouth I ate hamburgers with,  
was pressed against the ground so tight
mud was getting stuck in my teeth
and my ears, the same ears
that heard my first sounds
were filled with colored noise, with black noise
with screaming from people I thought I knew
and those mortar and AK 47 rounds that came as fast as hail stones
and then those same ears started ringing,
but ringing is not the right ******* word
because it doesn’t sound like school bells
or phones you are eager to answer
and I can’t describe what is sounds like
and anybody who does wasn’t really there
but it is easy to say 45 years later it was
like something you knew, but you didn’t know
whatever it is you knew, and contradictions
are imperatives and declaratives, not interrogatives  
like the people of “the world” think they are  
and people of the world are filled with interrogatives
and you are filled with answers
that won’t come to your tongue
because you are still spitting out the ****
from the rice paddies and the lies you needed  
to keep you from sticking the barrel
in your own mouth, but they, those who weren’t there  
wanted to believe even more than you  
so they could still look at you without thinking
the blood on your hands, the blood coming from your lost limbs
the blood oozing into the mire in some script
the dead donor did not know--all that blood
could not be spilled in vain, though you knew it meant little
when you rinsed it from you boots,
or even when splattered in your face  
the same face that smiled for the little gray square
in the year book eighteen months before      
or maybe a million years ago
in the land of affluent aphorisms
and fingers on bra straps
rather than the rock and roll auto switch of your M-16
the fingers, the same fingers
that squeezed the trigger  
and killed something inside you
while the rounds sliced the exploding stinking air  
you were happy to silently breathe

he slammed his cup on the counter  
not to get anyone’s attention
though his cup was empty  
I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes  
of course they were bloodshot  
and of course he stank of nicotine
and of truth that he said could not be found
in the bottom of that coffee cup or bottle of gin  
though he ****** up both  like…
hell, I can’t compare it to anything  
and he would think a simile was a waste of words
he told me of a lover he once had, Elisa  
with hair so long she sat on it  
and a thirst as ravenous as his  
which led her to an alley in South Chicago
where the ***** or the H put her to sleep
for good, and how he buried her in Peoria
in a hard freeze, beside her brother
who got killed in Phu Bai, by “friendly fire”
but Bukowski laughed through his tears
when he heard that ****, “friendly fire”
and he filled his glass again,
with Bourbon I guess--I wasn’t at  Elisa’s
numb mother’s house that day
and when he lost another ****** lover
to a drunk driver, he didn’t say anything about irony  
just said, ****, it hurts to be close  
and he didn’t trust this happiness ****
because it didn’t last, but pain, hell,
you can count on that ******* and if he leaves,
you can make some up on your own…  
the waitress filled our cups to the top
so there was no space for the cream  
I sipped slowly to make room
he took a swig that had to scald his tongue
but I could not tell, for he was already on the death
of lover number three, sitting there with me  
waiting for him to stop the foul flow of truth