————
————
Writers Make Choices
Why don’t we both sleep on it tonight
almost make it to some sort of daylight
I was working on a book
editing the part when he met her
jealous when you woke up
you looked at me
at my typewriter
yawning, stretching your wonderful limbs
asking whether I wanted to join you in the shower
flawless through your efforts
but there was already too much daydream to go around
so I smoked and made toast for us
instead
while you walked out clean
and asked where I ended up
I told you
that he was in Greenwich Village
wearing dingy sunglasses
when he saw her
off the bus
stopped by his favorite bar
(Trostky’s Mexican Adventure with the happy hour promising half-priced drinks)
he leaned against a railing
and made his life
a glory for fiction stuck inside
fiction
an addiction to love and policy
a polylemma between breathing
him following her, skipping from verso to verso
and my taking you
where mistakes can’t always be corrected
where I can’t always be refined
undressed by red ink
but if you’ll ungently take me to some place ungentle
where it’s snug and warm
and a repetition isn’t needed because nothing ends
then I’ll find a way to cut the rhapsody off the tree
and finally let it sleep
for it’s been dangling like a shaman
for four years next month
growing hostile and vindictive
like a sad lover lost in a length of time
having nary to do with life
and barely anything to do with me
anymore
————
