Oh, these August babies! All hot in their mother's womb. Like a vacation in hell, but you like it. I'm sure that the croupier's hair is teased to hide the horns beneath. I've spent too much. Now in the bedroom, I'm thinking of you. I'm thinking of you a lot. When I imagine that Mississippi river basin out there, the one I saw when going to bed this morning, you are walking across it in a cotton dress. Sweaty and hair sticking to your neck, you are walking across it toward me this time. I feel you in my heart in this flat place. I feel you there intensely. I hope it is not just imagination. That is you? Cotton dress? Sweat and hair? You are walking toward me? Or is it away? Is the heat that rises, mixed with river water, creating mirages on the horizon? My kingdom for you to be here for just 5 minutes.
August 2005 Archives
My baby just called me,
drunk after the party,
to say she loves me
and misses me, and
just after I had
fallen asleep in
this old new bed
that has yet to be
christened again and
it woke me up and
I wish she would
do it again and
again and again.
Out tonight,
the neighbors are having a party,
and all up and down
this street are cars,
parked where yours did once
and I came home worried
about potential blockage
to the back drive
after watching Charade
with Shannon at the new house that
he and his wife and new baby
have in Reynoldstown.
I drank a beer
a couple of gin and tonics
had a burger
a Coke and a movie and
at midnight find myself back here
with a picture of you
floating in the air...
just simply floating.
I put on a shirt that
you bought me with
a shirt that
you bought me on top
like a double hug
tonight because you
were not here. Burger,
gin and tonic, beer. Stop.
Western Union and Pony Express.
Your quackery is on the shelf.
It's all gonna be alright.
Still the love of your life.
It's all gonna be alright.
Beatles playing cards.
It's all gonna be alright.
Western shirt and empty bed.
It's all gonna be alright.
When I imagine dreams,
and they will come,
you will be floating there,
just above the horizon,
just simply floating.
Your heart will be a house
and you will hold it in your hand.
The sign out front
will not be for rent
or for sale,
it will just say for me
to move back in.
House,
shirt,
cards,
comfort,
and all.
Tonight is nothing,
I am supposed to be nothing too,
or at least happy, and
to be sure,
this house is really nothing,
a nothing you once thanked me so much for,
but nothing can bring this nothing back.
Nothing acting on nothing.
The orange glow from the pub sign
atop the refrigerator with
the ice maker is nothing, and
the picture of you applying
mascara in the bathroom on the hall,
your bathroom, is, too, now nothing.
The oven stench from tonight's
frozen pizza is nothing, and I fear that
where I sit here, in this room, and
write this is nothing, and I too, and
so is this nothing as well?
The times we made love on the living room floor,
atop a flea market throw will soon be nothing, and
only later will other lovers hear maybe an echo,
but ultimately echoes are nothing. Ultimately,
the Florida room is nothing,
and the 5000 packs of
cigarette smoke there is nothing,
as smoke always is.
This house is smoke,
this house is burning,
this house will soon be nothing
but a spot two blocks from where
you chose once, in my absence,
to carve our initials for the ages
into a mound of concrete,
and to then come back here,
when here was something.
I am sitting here
waiting on you to return from
a gender exclusive affair on
the other end of the street, and
every car passing turns down the one street and
continues down the other and
at times I convince myself, that
tonight you've decided not to come back.
You told me yesterday
you were leaving,
not me but here, this
place that we found so perfect.
You needed an adventure, one
in which you hoped to find yourself, and
today we went and looked at
particularly adventuresome spots.
Tonight I am waiting,
after pizza, water, orange juice, cigarettes,
and the glass door tilted in,
and the glass windows tilted out,
and the screen door shut,
and the bugs humming -
all cars make the turn and continue straight,
sitting and smoking,
I hear clanking of keys
and think it is you,
but it is just ghost,
as the whole place soon will be,
little by little,
until nothing of matter
of either of us will be here.
