campaigns end

Cup this 2 year bottle draining

light out of the doorway.

it is the cold night, it is the short morning

it is day old croissants eaten by the punch clock

and notes furiously scribbled down on menu scraps

and hidden.

it is the cooks dropping out of school,

cutting their hair and moving back in with mom

in blackwater new jersey and

the gun sticking out of stewards’ belts

when they answer the door unpaused call of duty

triangulating the room in blue light.

He said he could fix anything,

He said he and the other seafarers tossed

Their boss over the railing one night

Because of what he’d called them.

It is midnight but I am sitting down to mint tea

and pulling apart fried fish with my fingers

with a view of the bed with 2 different color sheets

splitting it for mother and son.

Will you walk down this hallway with me

Where the broken glasses pray to the god of forgiveness

And the booms of raucous banquets make them sound

Like chandeliers crying if you close your eyes?

Hold my hand and tell me why Mario keeps getting the kids

Ribcages jutting out of the floor

And Rose must bottle it every night

And play it safe with a legal team

She could never afford.

And after we make love I watch her sleep

For the first time in a year, lips puckered

And cheeks slack like a baby. How close to bliss

We are at times, held apart by inches of breath.

How close to death, tied by our eyes looking

Everywhere else—I hunger for elusive honesty now

When the streets and I, the cold trees and i

Are the only ones awake, I crave the invasion

Of the real over everything.

Oh conquer me so that it might not feel this way.

If I submit to sleep tomorrow will begin,

And I do not know what I will do tomorrow.

Where do the winds go?

How can I flow like water with this loss

In my belly like a snake, the things we did not do

Slithering through my veins, the lives we could have led

Bleeding into me like venom?

I howl with the wolves tonight,

I keen the end of day.

I am collecting dust and moisture to rain down from a great height

I am winters heart beating fall into submission.

It is over and for all my love,

People will suffer. I am leaving them in their rented apartments,

In their vacationless years and scuttling smiles when their boss comments

On the deep cut of their uniform. I am leaving everyone it seems

And may not find.....

Well, forget what I was about to say.

I am with the night tonight,

An end is an end, and this grief will pass too,

Like the gravel moves from the bank and settles

In the bottom of the river.