a warm day in late march
and i’m sitting on the porch.
the sounds
of a rock crusher
rise from the bottom of the hill
where they are tearing out the roads
i used to drive in my sleep.

where are my bars and liquor stores?
gazo’s bait shop is closed and razed.
petersen’s cheap gas is cracked and gone
except for the small shelter the old man
used to hide in until a car pulled up; now
it gives a roof to the workers
when they need to smoke in the rain.

the crocus is up and the daffodil
is chasing it into the grey light.

where are my bars and liquor stores? where are
the rare hookers who cruised here, far from the main action?
they are tearing out the places where i used to live
or pass through on my way home to my life. they are calling it
rebirth. but i used to see a city here and now
i see a ghost:

the irish club is transparent and its lilting illegal voices
are drowned in the grind of the crushers.
i pick up the usual single beer for the short commute home
at andersen’s and find it will not stay in my hand. i wave to the shade
of a crag-faced whore, sad and unnoticed on the corner, and gazo’s worms
wriggle free and burrow into the soil of the remaining yards,
bringing flowers to the surface to decorate the tombs.

violets clinging
to the rock on the lake shore —
the waves fall just short

break the night’s fast
with absinthe and
glazed donuts. spend the morning
back in bed twisting the sheets.
buy drugs in the early afternoon
and walk for miles talking of crippled
ducks under the highways by the
dirty river. back to bed and then
when that’s done, eat roast beef
sandwiches and hard cider in front of
fictional crime. throughout,
cigarette after cigarette and
kiss upon kiss.

tomorrow, work or love
or work and love.
pay too much for bread.
steal books from a grocery store.
maybe fight again
and make up, then
go out to drink hard cider and
stare into the pierced faces
of those whose stories
are as weird as this one.

in another time,
someone would have called this litany
surrealism.

something there is these days
that does not love a foundation,
a normalcy. something there is these days
that demands chaos from lovers.

only the stillest moments
of our meager sleep
remind us
of our parents.