SHOTS

Six shots,

The sky is an infinite dark

from my wine glass and your eyes

are abandoned homes of ailing

soldiers lonely in

dilapidated buildings and solar 

systems. He told me that

asphodels wreath on my lips like a

war cry, saving my mouth 

from the decaying Gods.

I told him to shut up,

shut up or I would shatter

his name with my fingertips

because God is a shard of

sunlight, and I'm

not an atheist on our purple date.

Five shots,

I'm singing an aubade to

parting French lovers.

He must be Wordsworth and

I am his forlorn lover,

the solitary reaper

asking for a tequila and hemlock 

cocktail. He tells me to shut up,

shut up or he would

barge into my

house with ferrous blood and

kill me with a fork. Damn.

"Murder is real",

I heard our master say,

and we have

committed it on esplanades and 

colonies for them, for our 

almost lovers at poison-per-head

bars.

Four shots, 

Mother asked me to change my 

rotten clothes for there were marks

of prehistoric pain. I cried.

She asked me not to.

"pain is fertile but 

dies on short notice."

It does not kill,

it aches inside our ribcage for two 

hours and slightly becomes

ancient. I knew the

serpent's eyes selling kisses in casks

of dahlia seeds. I knew.

Three shots, I am full,

I recited a poem sitting bare-legged

on the kitchen table

about battles I fought 

in Europe back on June the 

third. You told me that I was wrong

and my battle was only a

a rant at emergency

stations near the fifth avenue.

I wailed that night

into blue notebooks, read classic

poetry in the bath and

scratched radio edits

on my face.

I'm not me

and my laughter is now a

technicolor carousel on a gravelly land,

I was not wrong.

ONLY YOU WERE.

Two shots,

I am falling out of love.

You told me about

the coffeehouses with smog-tinted

windowpanes, traffics that counted 

less men on asphalt roads. I told you

there's a tragedy wrinkled on my

father's temple, and apparantly "trafficking"

is only related to humans.

You laughed. We laughed naked on

the cold bathroom floor,

the shower still

running.

One shot, last one please,

My flesh is Marlboro smoke hinting 

phone booth sex.

You are terrible, terrible.

AND YOU ONLY WANT TO

FUCK ME, LEAVE ME ON

PROMENADES.