The spice of life.

Seeing your face again,
irrational,
I masturbated violently -
oh shame of my failure
you thing left undone.

Last I'd heard your ghost went to Denmark,
a far cry from Franklin St and
an untimely end to our star-cross'd affair.

Now here I find you are
barely two hours south.

The irony is palpable.

So much so that I came,
cleaned off,
and wrote a poem
all about
it.

A love song.

Would you taste the same if
wet with surrender
you parted your legs for the length of my tongue
and I searched your flesh with my fingers
to fill in every void?

I would show you what was taught me
in the decades as they passed
to push your head back toward the pillow
and grip your golden moaning throat,
keeping time until in waves you cum:
into my mouth,
the sheets, and
on the
floor.

Oh to revel in that sweet abandon
vulgar and depraved.

Meditating at the temple of
your tan and timeless
ass.

There is nothing to say because we have forgotten who we are.
there is nothing to hear because we have forgotten what we sound like.
We have traded in the tactile for the faux and abstract
and the rejuvenating fire of truth
for the familiar comfort
of
lies.

Here lies our once boundless potential
and best of
intentions.

Somehow it still goes on.
In solitude and in separation
in fabric that hides our smiles
and in the memories of those I will
never see
again.

The ink on my arm is a reminder
of your face when we were both
so
young.

I think about you sometimes,
in different ways,
ways you would and
ways you wouldn't
want to most likely ever
know.

I watched you grow up with him.
You watched me get older.

You told me the truth that
I never really had a child after all
so
I stopped planning to kill
myself.

I think about you sometimes and
I hope somewhere you're singing
and the sky is always
blue.

Downtown diaspora.

I chew these sour stories and spit them from my mouth.

Perpetually projected upon the dark of my eyelids,
the diagonal streetlamps cast shadows down the blurred lines of
West North's neon corridor.

Distant ghosts cry out as they begin to fade away
the names and faces I can no longer quite recall.

Tell us, was it really all for nothing?

Were we not angels tempted by the careless fires of hell?

Were we merely orphaned children needing to belong,
finding comfort and hope in
one another's likewise
unspoken
resignation?

Look at us now:
Downtown diaspora.

Post traumatic and
moving on like they told us
we had no choice but
to
do.

I whisper to the intangible silence of no one
I loved you all completely and
I love you all completely
still.

For K.

I live repetitious in unremarkable routine
and out there, alone in night, my compatriots lie dying.
Take me to where news ceases to travel
and I, in the bliss of the ignorant, will live out my mortal days
satisfied
that the saints of my sinful past
likewise count the stars of heaven without
becoming
them.

The city,
devoid of the burden of my memories,
offers up the bodies of my brethren
instead.