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“All the distress that he had ever known, the sorrow and the pain, had been because of women. It was something that in different ways they did to him, unconsciously, almost casually – perhaps finding him tender-minded and afraid, they killed the things in him that menaced their absolute sway.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
One for Anthony Patch
In futile lives we shed
our cuffed earnestness
like sweat
and when the handsome man wakes like an ocean
there is no gulf left
just a vast empty space
that surfaced miracles and moralities and
false hopes alike
in the manner of a blind soldier dancing
while the smoke in the corner sings “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”.
In the past her skin was porcelaneous
another dangerous and tender venture
like the city we lived in easy
an evening she fell asleep in her glasses and woke fearful of what one might see at night
with a glorious lunacy
and with passionate arms and wet flesh which skirred rhythmlessly to rasping jazz
that always sounded like a religious dawn
merciless upon approach
and it all seemed like buying a blowjob on the Upper East Side with a bag of nickels unrolled
like exile in romantic upkeep
like wet clouds made of delicate cinders and dry cement falling around you during a lovesome mescaline journey home
it’s was like she called the nuthouse,
like a call to the stables,
saying “you need to get less crazy so you can see me, so you can fuck me…”
and then you find yourself
walking along a drunken street like a narrow plank splintering your feet
waiting for that phonecall to seem new and reviving
riveting
and then during an empty pause she’d excuse herself
saying that “when I told you to be free
I didn’t intend to mean from me”
What, unfortunately
we never remember
is that it’s never too late until they burn or bury you
in that constant company of strangers…
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