Depressive Episodes
She buries herself in murk & lonely earth
like a mole streaking to hide from footsteps.
Mole is also another word for spy,
like Aldrich Ames trading secrets for the lie of money
instead of the competing lies of flags.
Spy serves as synonym for see,
as in: if we could afford it,
we’d travel to see the tulips at Les Tuileries,
an unmanned rocket burning on its pad,
the world’s largest ball of twine,
an execution, though we don’t agree.
But, see as well means prophesy,
a fancy way of saying fear the future,
which she does, which is why
I want to tell her all will be right.
She’s built herself a grave for midnights &
sleeps in it as though the dark she wears
like a casket shell is the sole safe place
on this bastard of a planet where she lives.
* * *
He threw his
crack pipe on my dashboard,
leaned out my
window like a dirt-blond cocker spaniel,
howling at the
women we passed. This was after
he held a
hunter’s knife against my throat
because his
mother sold me pills, & he wanted to be the one
to score a few
bucks, to run the show.
Chaos business
was the biggest brand in any parking lot
behind some hick
bar so unknown its name changed twice a year.
How many
strangers shook my hand with a baggie in between? &
Charlie? Last
time I saw him, we were both in jail:
sober, muted. I
read in the paper
how he robbed a
woman for thirteen dollars,
threatening her
with a broken bottle
That was Charlie:
coked up, drunk,
small-time with
ambitions, stupid-crazy like a spider
drowning inches
from the slippery cyan wall of a swimming pool.
* * *
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