My neck is broken
and survives the humiliation
of turning me into a human accordion
by remembering those times when I had nothing
but my integrity in solitary confinement.

I gotta look good for the part of the city
protected by that curtain. It’s a lifetime
of scenic blindness in every direction.
And I know the intangible love affair song enough
to know that it feels like the ocean with a Pacino complex,
but that it hits the skin like a snowstorm hiding a fire truck.

As though only the fists of Rocky Marciano came back,
and kept every ounce of their bad intentions
from the lean and mean years.

It’s certainly not the same
as trying to find her hands
under light years of warm covers.

This neck wants trouble to rain down on me,
because the tickertape parade smells social anxiety on my breath.
Waiting with smiles, and candy apples soaked in Everclear,
for my nightly disgraces and bad calls to leave me floating face down
in String Cheese Park’s oldest and meanest coin pond.

I’m not dead yet,
and the scene where I say so
is exactly like that scene in Holy Grail.

This two-bit dance studio should have let me be
a long,
long and painfully polite time ago.

My vices are tidy, neat note cards
in the kind of classy handwriting
you just don’t see any more.

Not unless a man of calm means
is in big,
big trouble.

The librarian who keeps them
lives in Omaha, goes to pieces
when one of his cats slips into sleep
and refuses to tell me how many times
he took the cigarette out of my hand.
after I had fallen asleep.

That’s madness, sweetheart,
but it’s nothing I haven’t worn on my sleeve.
And it’s nothing that can kill me,
any faster than a cigarette smoking contest
with the walls and their pure-white eyes.

I have no intention of lying to you.

I’ll call back an hour,
because I’m a sucker for a diner payphone,
and I’ll hope to see you here by dawn at the latest.

11/06/2011

Author's Note: the title is, of course, rocky marciano's professional record at the time of his retirement.

Posted on 11/06/2011
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