Dear Jacob — asking us
what poem he should read
and then saying (when he got
to the stage), “This is by request…”
every time, every time.

Dear man who wrote the book,
“I cry a gentleman’s issue” (whose name
I don’t remember, though I’m trying like mad) —
folded arms holding your cane,
your voice like maybe a god’s voice
saying, “I am the wolf and I am
HUNGRY, ahhh…”

Dear Marcel in French (who was
Belgian, if I’m not mistaken) and indeed
all the dear other nameless women,
dear forgotten nameless men;
you are all a part of me and my poems.
I sit here and imagine you with a divine voice
behind my closed eyes.

What would I not give up
to return to Eleni’s at night,
some rainy Sunday night, across from
the Brown Square Social Club,
careful not to park on their side of
the lot?

Well,
I wouldn’t quit my day job.
I wouldn’t quit my money or my
suffering for it or the machinations
of petty workforces to get me fired,
to get me gone.

But
I would give up
my tenderest moments there
at Eleni’s and elsewhere — surrender
those movements toward ecstasy
as well as my downward spirals —
I’d give up their words I took to mean
so much so long ago, surrender them
to smoke and fog and other miasma,
other distractions in memory’s cave.

I’d close my eyes to them, to Marcel
and Jacob and the guy I can’t name;
I’d imagine them gone, or not imagine them
at all.

After all
it’s not likely that I am
in their heads either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T