savage detectives

lost breaths turning to smoke

cohabitate with smog and the folds of a new, old

jacket. What’s outside the window?

Dark bar straining over the final pages—

I move close to the medical devices salesman humming

Sinatra by the door, covered in curtains.

On the penultimate, he reaches across the bar,

Taps me on the shoulder, bottles of Amador and dalmore

In the mirror, catching my own eyes brown and leafy,

He asks me “how it is”

Dark sky, dark moon, shake of her thighs,

I am remembering here fever dream wrapping day

In its warm mouth—turning ashamed with mice

Limping barefoot over frozen tiles,

Encountering beth 2 days out of work,

Blurry eyed on speed wanting to talk until the morning—

Here’s a story – pathetic dribbling face on the L with unshaved upper-lip,

Two teenagers obviously skipping school with pink lip gloss slinking

Under the arm on a crowded train, the sound of giggles and the brush

Of nylon on nylon—

I wonder this man’s red cheeks in his corner seat

Into a cloudy present—his money against

the shoes scraping sidewalk salt just outside.

I think of kissing him suddenly,

Feathery hair and 60 year old jaw.

Danny forgets the Guinness he was pouring.

In the house, the co2 tank plinks away

Time, empty like time—

Sean drags out my bedroom window,

Skin singing painfully in January,

Charlotte bunkers down south discovering

The jungles of staying away—coming and coming to

In foreign begs, unromantic at the houses

Of the rich and gay in a city she can’t figure

How to leave.

Paul is holding the last arms back before

Clocking out, hunkering his chin

To the train.

Maybe I will make $100 today.

There’s a story here, of course,

Wholly dark and rainy eyed, bitter

Like bark and green in small ways

And growing with a bit of sun—

But

a new one seems to start so soon on the last

and that’s ok, hell that’s good.

But

I am looking out the window

1.     at kb raw and something big and far away, seeing her river eyed power

2.     at the slow blood of past loves gathering, shoring nursing schedules against their ruins

3.     at ativan gored pumping and thinking and loving sid, a family ahead and a family behind stretching farther than either of us can see

4.     at who I might have been had the story telling impulse been just a bit weaker.