Stranger people than you have tied me
to my mattress and sent me down the river
that just happened to show up one day
and take over some of the busier streets that lead out of town.

Faye Runaways and ferocious glamour girls of all kinds
have almost done me in with dishonest compliments as basic
as the absurd idea that I’ve lost weight in the past year.

Or they just tell me that I’m funny in a sobering kinda way
and have a smile that looks good in every twenty-fifth photograph.

College kids with video cameras have told me
they like the way I can fly through a closed window
and laugh when somebody hands me a towel
to get all that irritating blood and glass out of my eyes.

Rollercoaster’s have become self-aware
and quick to lose their temper.

Old Crow,
poisoned cheeseburgers and liquefied sleeping pills
take more out of me now than they did at sixteen.

You’re going to have to try harder.

Maybe it’s time to wear those stockings
you brought along when we first met.

Or you could keep the room temperature down
to something like ninety whenever I’m dumb enough to remember
where your apartment can be found about half of the time.

I’m just a few months out of dodge
of being a foolish kid. I still borrow a heart
from the local derelict library and wear it
just a couple of inches under my sleeve.

A good writer can talk me into almost anything.
A pretty face can do that about half as often.

You’re beautiful in almost every kind of light,
and I’ve seen your work in a couple of small literary journals.

There was that time we stayed up all night
to realize that we could go drink-for-drink
and word-for-word with every mistake
we had ever made.

That night
you may very well have been honest.

It could have been a trick. I’m almost certain
that it was no way meant to be intentional.

I think sometimes people just get scared
before the sun comes up and believe for just a second
that you can be on your deathbed standing up.

That’s how I spend most of my free time,
and you’re not nearly as mysterious as you think.

Dangerous as hell,
but nothing I haven’t seen from living, dying
and then getting out of bed to live some more.

12/22/2010

Posted on 12/22/2010
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