3765. AND TO HELL WITH ALL THIS

AND TO HELL 

WITH ALL THIS

Not again  - the landscape in the drawer

and all that imagined geography on the wood

I saw  -  some snappy old desktop, a place

under glass. I swear I could make it out,

in the patterns and swirls of the wood, a 

place I could live forever. Valleys, lakes,

hills and mountains; a veritable woodland

mountain for me to take.

-

But, I dissemble. Now it is many years

later  -  there are cigarette burns in the

countertop, and grandad's old pipe-stand 

too is gone. No pens, and  -  egads again  -

no typewriter either. Aren't we the essence

of all that change? And, fuck anyway, it's

now too late for the living. I want to put a

gun in my mouth and pull.

-

I want to look at women until I'm dead.

Not that back-of-the-playing-card-Grandpa's-

top-desk-drawer kind, but rather those tender

riling buds I see all around me. I want to be

there, all amidst it all, before I die, before

I fall. It's not that it's a sin to lust, it's more

that I have lost all trust: in everything left,

-

in anything real, in moments that matter, in

noise that stops, in all that patter : I want you,

oh God, I do. I want to go on, at the very

same time I want to stop. And to Hell with

all this again, and over and over again

I want to - stop.