For C

I sip the cup of blackness
and drink in the nothing of night
all around me sail the flights of words
set aloft from your callow
lips.

I am beloved,
I feel alive.

You've seen me

in the downs
in the depths -
I begged you once
for
sin and
you, without judgement, held
me.

Now I tuck away a photo of you
in a billfold in my pocket.

A passenger beside me daily,
we navigate the world together
side by side
and I tenderly call you
friend.

In a brief moment of twilight I thought
about how lovely it would be to dance again
across a marble face in black dress shoes
with you -
your ivory skin in counterpoint
to a dress crimson red,
a fine complement for our mutually complicit
infidelity.

In the end it came to me
exactly what I deserved:
the entirety of
you.

Manhattans and maraschinos
how alluring was your face.

Manhattans and maraschinos
how sweet the devil tastes.

I didn't have the water
for the drought of your soul.
I was a bud of you
thirsting from the same vine and
cursing with you the calamity
of the vile injustice of being.

Nature abhors the abomination of imbalance
and you needed me to tell you that you did well
when it was beyond the pale
of a skinny and quiet child
too sensitive for screaming
and leather belts that cracked against
his
spine.

So now you sit in twilight
aging slightly left of center and grace
and I promise to look after your body
and keep four walls for
aging
bones.

I would have loved to hear you were proud
when it mattered
but you always came first,
and you never showed me anything
because no one ever showed you
and the sins of fathers fall undeserved to sons
and the ghost of their failures
will haunt me both now
and
forevermore.

I know where you are lover
unjustly caged in, young lioness,
alone without need
of champion
or cub.
Before you stands the mountain
inside you lies
the
sea.
What to do with all that fire,
burn the effigy?
Alight the bridge?
Abscond to the Isle,
cut your hair and
change your name?
I say run, siren,
go mad with womanhood,
shout into the silent depths
pull the stars into your stomach
and the sky across your eyes.
They
will
know
you
were
here.
From dust we came and
to dust we'll go
give em' hell kid
in
between.
Give it all away and
and when you're done
I'll have a shoulder for your burden
and a place
for your weary
head.

I only went there to find you,
I pushed the button and now I wait
on your arms,
and your legs,
and the skin between
your thighs.

I want to tell you these lines in staged drama
and feel your honeysuckle tongue
run over my teeth
playing the part even
though they call
cut.

Remember when we laid our heads
on the pillowcase one-eyed sideways
after all that drinking out on
your front
porch?

I wish that I could remember everything
I said there
that made you look at me
like
that.

I want to say it again
now
and mean it.

I want to say it again,
now that I'm
well.

It's a bitter irony
that now I'm ready for you
when I'll most likely never
see you
again.