THE EXPIRATION DATE ON THE WORLD IS NOT QUITE THE SAME AS THE EXPIRATION DATE ON MY PROPHYLACTIC

THE EXPIRATION DATE ON THE WORLD IS NOT QUITE THE SAME AS THE EXPIRATION DATE ON MY PROPHYLACTIC

THE EXPIRATION DATE ON THE WORLD IS NOT QUITE THE SAME AS THE EXPIRATION DATE ON MY PROPHYLACTIC

gone the steel span of that wrapped building
and another, one other, and:   crumb scrap fizzle

art, you have the ephemerality I always wanted in a man
until I got it:   kisskiss, firefly—you go out bruise yellow


then me:  throwing out receipts, matchbooks, old phone nos.
or piles of napkins on which I’d written evidentiary hearing
and other phrases too prosaic to keep:  your name,
a hundred names like yours:  could have been dramatis personae
insofar as your presence is felt to me now:  and the others—.

lips can say anything but first they say goodbye
that word, a kind of cynosure in this hourglass I call my life
not altogether pleasant, not altogether un-
someday the guidebooks will indicate the divot I rest in


but, that’s far off, isn\'t it?    let’s pull out all the unused appliances
spread our flanks upon the grim barge to oblivion
grind and churn—there’s magma far below this placid surface
tonight, it threatens to spout its stones up to the sky

heaving upon the shore:   its furious outcry scalding jelly

what to do when hot pebbles clobber us in the night