In the no-name hotel up from the ferry my man spasms on
his high like some half dead Zebra Finch squirting worm juice.
Antediluvian railroad clerk-windows revamped over spittoons of
butts and Brillo, mushroom sand. Pay, eh? the counter jumper bent
to porn spurts. I watch for what I should have known, what I knew
and wouldn’t . Smell the gluey dope musk of dead
daisies and leftover rice from the sweat-kettle pores,
and hear the alligator-rattle-throat yell this man
who’s not mine will make when I tell him romance can’t come
back. One crack head floats
into another almost straight
from the doorless abandominiums and the same
decapitated angel fountain day after
day threatens to spurt blood. The antidote
is sick, I reckon. Get thee to the street. How now
could that plausibly be bad?
Though they tell us this is no rehearse,
that good girls diminuendo into megaverse,
I’m merely versed in rent by the day, sickly
sweet air. Sundress sticking to motley beds
in puddles of Doctor Pepper. Staten Island frets
its hollow circular body, toothed like bluegrass
banjo. I hunt through your haunches, look for the rose
stem pipe. Nothing there
but baggies, a lover’s picture
tobacco-blotted over my lips. I could play you
over and over, my adored interloper,
my special man Woman Under the Influence film—but Baby
T, and A Beautiful Mind strange. I’m still here,
aren’t I? Call me loser’s lonesome
dove, no, earthless child, motherless, waiting for the rose-O
how to go softly your forsaken sweet who cries you
in the shelter and the nowhere else.
What happened to me? My fingers
trace hearts on the bed. Waiting for the
single bloom on fulsome branch while you lick
your lips over.