The woman
you prize

a former target
from a shooting game
at the state fair

sets her head to bobbing
quickly up and down
back and forth
whenever you look
directly at her
these days

As soon as you’re awake
you run from her

to flit from place to place
fuming and sputtering

Upon arrival at each
begin to fret
that you should have stayed
wherever you just were

Back home
your dogs
sit near the door
their noses flicking and flaring
waiting for you

They hide
when you turn the knob
to come in

but a few minutes
after seeing to
your unloaded menace
everyone licks your face

even the woman who ducked you this morning

As soon as you’re not alone
you break into a full
wetface aria

“Who am I that they can love me
all of them knowing
I’m the gun
and the bomb
and the kicker”

They tell you to wait till you are alone
to pity yourself
because

you also cannot sing

Cold water
tastes of black;

warm tea,
redolent with spice-red brown;

all cheeses
contain a trace of green,

and meats of all varieties
are purple as they go down.

Landscape art
on the teeth and tongue,

a portrait within me later.
There’s a golden tinge

in the bourbon that follows;
there was shell gesso

in my former hunger, orange bile
in my gluttony’s later gut.

I live like this, in agony,
stunned and overwhelmed by every meal.

I can’t stop the pictures.
I can’t eat enough to get to

the absence of light
I so long for.  And

I have tried, Lord,
I have tried.

What does it say about me
that I’m still happy under your bed?

What does it say about you
that you know I’m still here
but won’t even look?

I am still your imaginary friend.
Do you remember my name?
Why are you are not thinking of me?
There have been whole years
where I mostly
can’t stop thinking about you
and the times when I can are not
predictable.  So why
am I so easy to forget?

I never told you this, but
thank you for your skin.
I liked your skin a lot
and when late hours blind my hands,

your skin still lights up
the ceiling and the walls.
I need that. Thank you.
You still give and give
even if you don’t want
to know me.

Oooh, so
creepy you have just become
with all that shield around you.
Did I touch you?  I did. Then,
and just now.

I can’t make you remember my name
but at least you know I’m here.

Once in a while
you really should peek at me
down here.
I’m just a little shiver now,
no flinty danger.

I’ll take a short time slot.

Please?

You have a long life line,
said the palmist.  I know,
I replied.  I’m already old. 

You have a symbol of great power
there too, she said. I know that
too, I said.  Tell me something
I don’t know.

Your hands
are empty, she said.  They were full
and now they are open
and waiting for the next gift
to fall into them.

That was news to me
who had never felt anything,
ever, of any weight or substance
in there.

Did you not feel my hands in yours,
warm, soft, and ready, she asked?
And I had not.

Ach, she said,
What is one
to do with someone like you
who asks for his fortune
to be revealed
when he cannot feel the one
that is already there?

An ancient gentleman
in a cap
sat outside the cafe
and said to me, out of the blue,
in what I suspect
was an Albanian accent:

“Best friend. Fifty years,”

and held up a burning handrolled cigarette.

“I no speak English much.
I no speak without at all,
best friend, tobacco,
fifty years…”

And he laughed through brown peg teeth.

I could see what he meant.
Hell, we were talking, weren’t we?
And we hadn’t been.  Not till then,
and here he was being perfectly clear —
two friends laughing, perfectly clear, two of us
smoking together, holding our cigarettes
like talking sticks, taking turns
agreeing on friendship and sociability,
bridging gaps and silence
within a cloud of friendly, acrid smoke.