Plastic titties bouncing
along the boardwalk,
fake baked
flesh,
future leather handbags
waiting to be harpooned
by a whaler gent
collect rays in the surf.
I love their hair,
tangled from salt
and bleach
teeth bright in the California
heat.
I want them all,
knowing reputations
heartbreakers waiting to make a tourist
trapped,
but I left my heart at home.
The morning sky imagined
a glow of pink and purple
before the sun arrived,
before the horizon
imagined itself a blond,
like the smiling nurse
who helped me out to the car,
wearing colorful clips in her hair,
clips which stole the sunlight’s gleam.
On the sidewalk,
I stared at the asphalt,
it held a puddle of rainwater,
I imagined it a cocktail.
Over the sunlight,
a dense cloud dissipated,
creating a halo
around the red brick of the building
I earlier imagined
would be my last to enter.
I had never noticed sunlight ripple
in a street puddle before.
The ride home was uncomfortable
yet joyous.
The road imagined a parade,
cars lined up dutifully,
and the morning, so conscious of itself,
imagined a celebration of light
forever beaming, forever replete.
When you touched my hand,
it was as if
you imagined I needed your touch,
as if I imagined your touch
exactly at that time
to realize the morning.
Drunk on cheap red wine from the liquor store
Down the street at four a.m. on a mahogany
Saturday morning I stumble through the bedroom,
Toward the bathroom with its sliding shower door,
Towels balled-up on the tacky yellow tiles,
Hug the left side of the doorframe for balance, go in,
Lift my head as though I were waiting to drink the rain,
And piss on the toilet seat. With sudden sharp pains
In the left side of my ribcage I sit Indian style
On the edge of the mattress, thinking it’s good to be here,
Today I laid in bed all morning, depressed,
With the shades closed and watched Tony Soprano
Eat himself to death in high definition. Yesterday
I stayed in bed until ten p.m. in the near-darkness
With the closed shades looking like kimonos
Hung from the ceiling, a slight hue of gold shone through
The pursed edges from the streetlight across the street
And I pulled the covers over my head.
Steam constantly rises from the steel grates
In the sidewalks of Philadelphia. From the tenth floor
Of a hotel in Chicago and the eleventh of one in Philadelphia,
I saw piles of bricks and cars parked crookedly
On the rooftops of small buildings. There must be
A steel concoction pressed against the beams
Of the roof above my brain. Three times in the last month
I’ve caught myself crying in my sleep,
The first of which I dreamed my father had died
All over again, that he would continue to die,
That my life would go in reverse, like swimming
Upstream the River Styx watching all your old birthdays
Take place on the shores, until I end where the concierge
Checks my coat and crams the impossible baggage
Of my bones back into the womb.
I don’t want to be awake anymore. Not that I want to die,
I just want to sleep for a few years. Let these things
Iron themselves out. Everybody seems to see the point
In watching snails fizz and boil, except me.
I know that no one gets away with anything.
when i saw you in my head
you were really upside down
on this swing
in a park where we got drunk
somewhere close to july
in 2009
a glint of silver
your locket in the moonlight
that you stole from walmart
with the generic picture
of some girl i will never know
and the chain on the swing breaks
and down you fall
and i wake up and realize
we were never really there
barely at all