Carnations

[rowens]

Here's an awful thing people can tear apart.
.....................................................



I want to get so drunk
that every time I burp,
I throw up in my mouth.
—And the other stuff
…the other stuff.

In the morning,
my materials laid out
on the paper on my desk.
My materials,
Christ’s sake.
We’re still here.

The machinery…
We are still.
And I lit a butt of a cigarette.
Last night—
early this morning.
I can’t talk if they don’t remember the jazz radio;
last night, the memories of the bed,
endured.
We won’t let it…
There is never too much.

It’s like breaking a leg every step
you take;
you’ve been hanging out with actors and actresses too long.
It’s like pulling a rabbit out of a hat;
pulling notes for your poems out of your pocket.

He wrote it on his arm
so as not to forget.
Don’t stand in the doorway,
it’s an entrance between two worlds.

The slime of memories condemns the bed, nevertheless.
That’s what they said back home:
Always the catch phrase, “…nevertheless.”
It became an epidemic of repeating;
latching that word in, everyone in the crowd.

It even has to play over the radio,
when you’re in a car heading somewhere…