There was this bar where we would play cards
all summer long, till you fell down fall and all
we knew was sh** about the rules of any of the
games the old folks did not sense we would never play
In fact, we just stacked the whole deck geometriculously
like honeycomb houses: where I was
your king, or drone, or something, I don't know
but you - you were a queen, that at least
I was pretty sure of... We jenga'd
all the cards from up our sleeves,
and this little ritual of ours was then to
rest the King of Hearts against the Queen
Of Clubs – and at that tipping point I would joke about how
One would tumble if it weren't for the other,
whereupon you mumbled little nothings ‘bout them being
self-destructive, back-to-back, and with a B-52 fist
you'd finish the day's distractions. For time had
come, you flickered, to dress in dreams for
the night
I now know I should have wondered a bit more
about what you sighed Hemingway once said
regarding being hard-boiled about everything
in the daytime, but at night - oh at night
you were another thing, you
told me that now there was room
room for rooms in you
Because you had built a tinted-windowed house
between two temples which too tense
you used to love to look out of at hope within
the herds of wildebeest people you hated for being too
f**ing clueless to ever be as depressed as you
and I suppose I'm so sorry now for
your willing hallway being the single one and only
damn you could give, dam I could breach
in the course of one season - and sure, like fireflies, I saw
glimpses of dummies there, dressed in rags of madness
who, drowsing, drooled upon a fragile sculpture
you had chiseled out of yourself you said you
only once in your life had cried
when you begged to be built out of stone or wood
while you stood in front of oracled Apollo in Rome
marvelling at marble Daphne right before
she choked: on leaves of gra** and morning wood
you joked - and then you smiled.
"Would you not want to be a tree
some day? To never smell the small talk,
awkwardly insisting on being thick and sweet enough
to cover up (like bark) decay and weariness of people -
Would that not be a fun thing now,
honey?"
This - this I know: it was the ample summer buzzing
that made me miss how you
detached yourself from me –
not my private honey bee,
not my queen of private Clubs
and not with a roar, no, slower:
milligram by milligram
you slid - you contradict - away
and down
your quiet
Coca-Cola
trap
This - this I know:
I should've known
better