Of all my concrete lovers I
think I'll miss you most of
all.

Thirteen three sixty five's.
Five thousand nights.
Five thousand deaths.

Maybe one day they'll give me a star on Glenwood
carved into the pavement for posterity.
"Here once walked a cautionary tale."
Immortality is so
humiliating.

For a time the
crisscross of the Southern sky
lights and Oaks
were my canopy in a modest jungle.

For awhile I
fed the masses or made them dance.
I gave them courage by the mugful
and maybe made babies or beatings -
either way.

But my shoulders were heavy
under all
of that constant sunrise
that found us smoking
"what have we done?"
Walks of shame
and shudder.


Yet forever I'll be haunted
by those porches,
and those bedposts
and those confessions,
and the daughters
and their eyes.

It rips me up and sideways
a part of me is dead.
The last bastion of abandon
doomed to assimilate.

But before I go
and roll credits on the film:

I love you.

I love you.

Five thousand nights,
Five thousand times.

I love you.