Eclipse

The First Cummings said

she rattles like angry candy.
True.  

Luna'd been shooting wet Pop-Rocks 

like BBs against the wallpaper 

of the skull that lives in your face.

Every day.  All day.  For a while.

Filling the alleys with vodka 

just made her move slower 

and all of the pills stacked like cobbles

dissolved leaving you (again) with

that Italian bitch of a goddess Luna 

her bird shot adding: tic tic tic...

Hanging in the window were 

faces that were lean and brown 

as Peking duck now looking like

wrapped hams or cheeses.
I have been sitting for too long

waiting for a light to flicker 

in my votive coffee,
a penitent holding a vigil.

I looked up to say something
and you were there

in front of the garland and lights

smiling in all directions

the Second Coming of

The Buddha of Christmas

or something equally happy

which was altogether (almost)
incomprehensible to me.

We waited and we watched the

World-sickle sliced Creamsicle Moon
bleed out blood orange and go dim.

We kept warm by expanding
and "jiggling the particles"

and stirring the bonfire
while Luna hissed
"tick, tick, tick"

flicking frozen shards of
the longest night of the year
at us like hard-learned candy.

sure nest

I wonder exactly what it was that was lost.

I wonder how it was lost.

I wonder if it was tossed too messily

for any hands to catch

like rice

or by being too small or too wispy

for his clumsy hands to grip

or too big.

if it escaped

if it was was stolen

If it was thrown away

...by accident

...by accident on purpose

If it was given up for dead and was buried somewhere

...and is waiting to sprout

...if is it entombed there

If, quietly,

I placed what I see him without

in the sure nest of his hands...

if he would make me take it back

just because he lost the first one.

Fight Or Flight Cartography

Flatland's kamikaze
suicide attack squadron
ambushed me in
the bathroom of the bar.
Four sheets to the wind
my hold bursting with
homesick dragons
the U.S.S. Edge of The Earth or Bust
went decisively
way too far east
and came back round.
Completely batshit
fucking retarded
beautiful idiot that I am
I forgot
it's a globe,
not a map.

Caffe Venezia

The smoking section sign...
each night it was at large and
drifted backward table by table.
Never where it should have been.
We wrote on the bathroom walls
until they gave us a chalkboard.
Then we wrote on the walls
around the chalkboard
as the staff played
Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"
on repeat. On repeat.

You pictured yourself as a
Kerouac or Bukowski,
but you couldn't drink yet...
and college towns are
hard places to find a good,
hard, underage drink.
So we were the Expatriates
we were the Hemingways
we were the Fitzgeralds.
Stains and cigarette ash on
our vintage wool and cottons,
on my beaded dress...
We were purists then:
we dressed like grandparents
and read things in French.

Our tongues lodged so very
firmly in our cheeks
that it became impossible
to talk so we watched
our condescension drip slowly
down the plate glass window
picturing the hole we'd punch
in reality by going out
young and beautiful.
We'd outlived Kurt Cobain.
We thought we were brave
but we were
just
young
and terribly
over-caffeinated.