“What I wonder is if she meant to do it on purpose,” I said. I was crossing and uncrossing my legs. My knees couldn’t get comfortable.

She was perched on a stool, delicately balanced looking down at me from that vantage.

“What does that matter?” she said.

Well it matters to me. I figure she either meant to do it to me maliciously or she did it because my feelings just didn’t matter. I just didn’t matter. Didn’t factor in.

Whether she wanted to destroy me or just didn’t care – it’s hard to say which is harder to comprehend.

“She was your lover, but she was never your partner,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve never had that. I don’t even know what that looks like.”

On my dresser is a statuette for the hanging of rope necklaces and chains – on the bottom the lovely figure of a curvy woman in a tight evening dress with a bend in the waist perfect for placing your hand and slit up to the thigh. Up top, there is no head and two wire arms for holding things.

The big joke is that if you talk long enough
Life gives you what you want
And lets you talk to yourself
So you’re the only one talking
And you start talking instead of thinking
So you don’t really know anything but you’re saying everything
And no one stops you
Because you’re boring
Or they don’t have the heart

But when you laugh there’s a purpose

I’ll buy another drink to fulfill that purpose
I’ll smoke another cigarette to find that purpose
And I’ll stay up
Late, late, late
So everyone shakes their heads
And wonders why I don’t sleep
As I stand like a snowman by the outpost for my morning cigarette
Slightly leaning

There’s sunlight in that laugh
And a sweet girl under a tree somewhere and the grass is waving
I’ll gather the light through the leaves and stuff it in my pockets
To keep traces what you leave behind

4 AM bursts from my eyes like Chinese dragons
We huddle closer over our knees
Our backs two arcs bending
Faces adumbrate in silhouette
Curling lips lit by sparks falling
A halo expanding
Constant acceleration
in the luminescent ether

I’ll talk till there’s no breath in my body
Then light one up and talk again

He didn’t make it easy
He did a little victory dance
Bounding like a child,
Like an ape howling into a vacuum
And he left
Flag planted
The flag is still there
He hasn’t been back

We don’t assign gender to objects in English
But we all know
A fork is male
A spoon is female
A hammer is male
A clamp is female
A whip is a brute
A ship is a lady
An umbrella’s a girl in an umbrella skirt

The moon is a woman
The shadows that crawl across her face
Smudged eyeliner
Unfathomable ranges in darkness descending
In sienna black weeping
Round cheek cool untouchable
Distant, distant, distant and beautiful
250,000 miles beautiful
Impossible
Bereft and unreachable

I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I’m so sorry baby
I’ll come back
It’s one day’s ride
It’s one thousand day’s ride
From Philadelphia
I’ve got money for gas
Or I’ll bring you to me
And make the tides change in our union
Fish flying upward
The Earth caving in
At the shift and the whisper of our love
Which never was and ever shall be
Or I’ll get drunk
And I’ll hop another rocket
Straddle it like a cowboy
Ride straight into you
Again
Again
I wasn’t careful enough
I’m sorry
Let me just look at you
Let me just
Don’t cry
Be still
You look so pretty in your own light

It’s comforting to know what they are
this time
to see them coming around the corner
like ragged bums and shaking addicts
in packs of 20.

And you know what’s coming next
that’s the appeal
though the impact of dead air
pains your lungs
and the smell is awful
and gets into everything
and in the morning
you cough up almost solid wads of salty mucus
that taste like ash into the toilet.

We favor the disgusting
if its also the familiar the and predictable.

But mistakes have a way of compiling
and impacting
till they take an unexpected shape
something different altogether.

At least I had a choice in the matter
This matter of untamable and unmerciful fate.

I empty the cut glass bowl of its ashen
debris
and start over.

In an hour
I’ll make another decision
and it will be my own.

We could all in any moment
inflame ourselves
with hubric passions
to ignite the starry blacktop
like phosphenes before closed eyes
the total night
that must happen
when the body gives over.
But we don’t.
We play video games.
We watch television.

Death is total relaxation
a final enduring exhale
like the ultimate orgasm.

But
I am told you shit your pants.
Most people are less afraid of dying
then they are shitting their pants.

And everyone is around you
is making a spectacle of your body
which doesn’t have the sense
to shut its own eyes or legs or mouth
tongue lolling out stupidly
and now you’ve soiled yourself.

God is a sadist
or a practical joker.
All the dignity they try
to restore with make up
and chemicals
and plastic putty
was already shit away
in your last act of life
or first act of death.

Quite a way to make an exit.

You have to.
Be careful to spend your life alive.
Death has no sympathy for you;
you are not special to it.
Don’t be fooled by the constant
ridiculous Grin
over those pale white cheeks bones.

It’s laughing at you.
And it will.
The question is:
What are you going to do about it
while you still have some time?

Still
when you want to
you can jump from the floor to the bookshelf
with nothing to boost you.
Which is like me vaulting my ass
onto the roof of this one story ranch
in one leap.
Like Spiderman.
Maybe you’ve got a few good years left.
I hope so.
You look at me like you know me.
Your eyes are golden keyholes when you dream.

The pain is in knowing that
everyone you knew
and whatever they said about you
that was so wrong
was also a little bit right.

Even the people that hate you.
Especially the people you hate.
Or.
You’d have no reason to hate them more.

The sidewalk lit like a carnival,
Their mall-clothes dispersed like confetti,
Their hair inexplicably perfect.
And if Jackson Pollock had been Jesus Christ at that very moment
Then faith had laid one definitive red dot down the lily forehead of that trend-rotten, iceberg lettuce on white community.

“Oh, the humanity,” cried chopper reporter
Alive-in-the-Sky-At-Five Fred
The traffic patroller in his flying machine
Weather prognosticator and leader of men

“The humanity!
I can see them below like fallen billiards.
I can see them lying like drunken sailors
One draped on the other in a final show of camaraderie.”

“And if they weren’t together, then they weren’t a thing and nothing is nothing on the face of this Earth.
Sunken cheek, string of spit, hollow-eyed, and trash-talking pouts.
They had their whole lives ahead. And them, with their sneakers still store white.”

And as Fred turns his flying nag back toward his home in the cumulous nimbus,
The sun falls hard, as though for the first time in love,
Over these six sixteen-swing-kids sweetly in love.

And no one shows to scoop to up their bodies
And no one dares to disturb their detached sanctity
And there they lie, ever still.