i miss the inch
before your lips
His personality
is fringe midwestern,
hailing from southern approximation,
a bit of Paris,
Kentucky, that is…
and a smidgeon of broadway
West Berlin.
normality
is a concept
invented by
a pharmaceutical
company
his oxfords stroll down
piano key sidewalks
stepping to quarter notes
noir film
thoughts smoldering
behind him in cigarette smoke
and i think
in another life
we would have fallen in love
during wartime
Hugh Hefner is dead
at 91
but his dick
is being kept alive
in the Playboy Mansion
so future generations
of starry-eyed young women
will not be deprived of the misery
of riding his withered antique
liver spotted genitalia
into a career of middling infamy
and sexual exploitation
there you are
right on cue
as if you personally orchestrated
my having been born
in September
the devil you know
swelling and morphing
through my dreams
your face changing
wearing various masks
such grand theatre
i weep
destroy my sheets
crying out in the night
reddest blood flowing
into marzipan rivers
oh my dear
how beautifully we suffer
this tether
my soul was lost
in an apple orchard
faded to ether
a 90 degree afternoon
in late September
leaves boiling off tree limbs
heat swirling billows
of sewer gas necrotic
urine stench blossoming
beneath the grimy crosswalk
underground rivers
of darkened discontent
glassy eyed hatred reflecting
off police car windows
drunken ballerina delirium
magic is dead beneath a tree
in Piatt Park
homeless
helpless
heroin limping
passed children unaware
their poverty is generational
a better life is four tax brackets away
no, son, no…
there is no god
in Over-The-Rhine
today
