1
Adrift in the middle of my years, I sit in a corner and drink. I eavesdrop
a tableful of girls romancing their cell phones, workshopping
love’ s abstract particulars,
while football plays on the big screen;
I listen like a thief in case the women know the score.
But I never could tell. At fulltime I walk home like a motherless child.
2
Witness is a solitary game. There isn’ t a thing I have left to say
but back in my room I ring like a singing bowl,
empty and unable to stop.
You’ re in nine kinds of pain, my friend; you know
the twenty-seven strains of despair. And your lovely hair has fallen.
The moon at my window is a rusted shot, caught in its corrupt trajectory down.
3
The world was always someone else’ s oyster, a metaphor
I never could prise open.
All I’ m good for tonight
is to let the night pass,
while beyond me the world peters and my friend fights beautifully
like a trout on god’ s line. The usual idiots are still in power. But they’ ll keep.