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The Last Poem

The smoke is clearer in the dark

The foggy glow from the television lights up her skin

like moonlit water

I lie alone

and to myself

I drink as I have always drunk

because of her

of how she used to sleep beside me

A romantic ploy, my little ingénue

but you’ve always known…

my mistress of the night

my troubled repetition

aching

a dull opiate along the Thames until a Roman villa

a dancer who taught the morbid dunce to smile

to fear death

to shake his fangs

to use his ink, instead fingers

to write his name in water like a lasting venom

to take his rings off before bed

to keep an extra toothbrush in his home

You will not find me dead

I will not let you

and I will see the beauty in everything again

in every room

My prose will be like sculpture

My poetry like covering your body in paint

until I become

an elegist for the sacrament found between your legs

until I hear

an embrace that becomes a final calling

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