I can smell my own pits,
my night sweats,
****** up in my week
unwashed robe.

I am disgusted.

And yet, there,
in the garment bags,
lingered in your suits,
your suits I brought home
from your funeral
in the sands so long far gone,
remains these same
and bitter musks.

And there, in the bags,
the pastes of rose wallpapers,
struggled up but aligned remain.

And there, in the bags,
a spruce topped Goya,
thick hipped as forests
and earth angels remains,
there before a sniff.

And though I sit here
in the acrid smoke and
coffee fumes, wondering
breakfast and baths,
you stand stiff as dry-clean,
tall on the hangers,
held and never squandered
for a tear, there,
thankfully there,
the scent of you remains.

The roads here,
*** tongued, black toothed
and pitted, lead somewhere.

I am sure that over the peak of it,
splayed out like toes in dry sand,
tractioned for tide, a florescence,
maybe, maybe down in the abalone towns,
the oyster shot towns - in The Mother of Pearl,
where I met a guy,
a guy named Reason,
slim fingered and wrung
out at last call.

But there it was, he said "if" first:
"nothing really closes,
I just exchange doors for
carpets, throwbacks and
occasional tables - leaf down
and close to the wall."

He said his name was Witness,
but I knew better, I knew better.
This cat was leather on tweed,
a pick-up line on a business card,
call me anytime. He had shacks
for eyes and his temples pulsed
like Patsy Cline.

He said he had a flounder's way of lying,
flat at the bottom of things - loose silted.
If I needed, he said, the skipjacks
split at dawn, but that's rarely the way
for land legs. And he grinned,
wide like a seiner.

They're always there - these ones -
slumped for a schmuck
dipped out for a just a thud away
from home, down the *** tongued
road to Blacktooth,
where the Water and Sand
shutters before The Mother of Pearl,
where the windows flicker like barbacks,
and a girl named Treason ticks...

If I gave thanks yesterday,
must I do so today?

If I gave thanks that the tires
held traction, there on the black ice,
unthrottled toward the jack-knifed
semi, folded in the median,
thumping through clods
of thrown and frozen earth,
would that be enough?

Would it be enough to be grateful
for the physics of glide,
steer with the slide, after all,
it was only mustard I needed,
coarse ground for the sauce,
for the sauce that will remain
untouched on the table,
peppered with panic and ****.

Espaliered vines hang like convicts,
strung out in the vineyards as portent
to passers by.

But the tasting rooms are open with cheeses,
retribution and grim justice -
verdicts of wine.

I see them, the tasters, the gawkers,
giddy on the road for sips of vengeance
and sublimation.

I see them, glued to the glass,
glued to the crushing of grapes,
calling it justified.

S'always gonna be there,
that stain like a slitherin' dog
done nabbed a cookie.

Let's call it spilt milk,
if we must, but ****
that was a rabbit punch.

Let's keep in it the hutch
with all the chipped bowls
and riddled towels.

I know. But forgive
don't mean forgot,
just means put away
with split chinas
and red linen.

Weathermen are pushing the storm.
Nobody noteworthy died today.
Eight to twelve on the Twins.
Havoc on the plains and cancellations
pending. No travel advised.
The schools flaked out before
the first wind blew, and the office
is gutted parental.
Milks are shoveled in carts,
pricey waters too. Croutons
got hoarded like hardtack,
and only the lettuce remains,
only the lettuce, the leeks,
and a few fibrous cereal grains.

What can I beg of tomorrow
that hasn't already been denied?
Am I a cup in hand, an avoided eye?

If I yearned for a lung not shallowed
with tar, would you grant it?
I thought not, I've asked before.

If I fought for one black minute
to toss the shovels aside,
to use my hands to dig,
to sift my own grave for riches,
would you give it?
I thought not, I've asked before.

And if I spit in your face,
take all the days unnumbered unto myself
and squander, would you take it?
I thought not, I've done it before.

I'll meet you in the morning,
yes, we'll face each other again.
But I'll want nothing this time,
I'll beg nothing but hard weathers
and grime. For that is all
you are want to give.