You could visit, of course
anytime you wished
I’d drive to some forsaken corner
of some city or town
and meet as strangers
to bring you here
And we’d arrive
to no fanfare or celebration
no ticker-tape parade or
speeches of desolate and abandoned words
The couch has lumps
and discarded dog hair litters the edges
of each room
like dandelion seeds against a fence
But you could sleep there
on that irregular pallet
or I would
and desert consciousness in
dreams of hallucinatory hibernation
My cat would sit
atop your lap, and my dog
at your feet
We could drive, with aimless intent
into the countryside, taking pictures
of imaginary blessings and real afflictions
We could sing, not like angels
but with the voices of the fractured
fragments of this paralyzed pilgrimage
We could drink
my emaciated body no longer able to hold well
under the onslaught of ethanol’s embrace
but feigning a convivial revival of
an absent animus
We could write ashen – but beautiful — words
in some language that fails to begin
to describe
the contortions of thought as it
breaks down at the edges
Perhaps we’d laugh, at some point in time
ill-defined and clumsy as
a staggering drunk outside a locked door
or scream at a barren sky
impotent and destitute and craving
absolution
So you could visit, and we could do
all those deserted things
that cry out for endings and
beginnings but are always
mired in the middle
