———-

Come on, woman!

You’re gonna drive me mad

or hoarse

or both

or dead…

———-

———-

Fuck It

 

A gravedigger is clowning at my steps

And I have forgotten who I’ve left to seek

it’s another frigid night

the type when you need Old Crow in your coffee

And yet I’ve since become the pulse for the countryless and deadly

I know not how

what reason there might be

after all, I’ve no sentimentality left

just an angry spoonful enough

to wheeze out a few nouns and verbs

about the perspective of yearning lovers

about glorious absurdities

and damned, dead souls

like Gogol maddening in frost

a binding of a book shriveled up in ice

I draw no heat, not anymore

I am more like the coarsened rye you keep in your freezer for a hungry day when the stars and nearly melted candles in the black, miasmic jingle that is a winter night, is all you have for honorable companions.

I feel red as a callous drunk trying to get his wife back

I am an empty blessing or a cup of vinegar

the salt for snow that never fell

the crinkle in a memorable back where my fingertips began a game of hopscotch  

the sullen grapevines of the Arizona desert that sit like a suicidal heckler…

Shit,

I got carried away,

And I’ve forgotten who I’ve left to seek

Why have I left home if it’s so cold outside

I’m sure there’ll be a woman to meet me for a drink

but do I want her

when I have the fantasy

and I’ve memorized Prufrock well enough.

I should stay in

seek no one

seek nothing

and maybe write another dirty poem

instead of burying a new seduction.

———-