The wheel went round and left me
on a block of broken bottles,
spirits spent. So where

Locality is all
you light, and you, as single as a bed.

As if intensity were a virtue we say
good and. Good and drunk. Good and dead.

that tough old bird the gull
hauls across the last-chance bars

His watch is wicked, going on
without him. Pass your hand
across the blue man’s lips and

We fix the ages of the irises at flower,
stop the eons of the oranges at fruit.
For ripe is ready when we eat, and beautiful is full

It begins simply with nail scissors, clipping, the ends of a few hairs from the edge of his beard. Finally, after a week, he begins to notice that his beard isn’t growing.

Dear Y.

What are you doing? Everyone I know is drunk. Everyone Iknow died. Everyone I know told me it would be all right but he had to write his mother-in-law for the go-ahead on a meal ticket. He drives it to school everyday. 

Every single one gone      Even the gray ones
         the color of his eyes      The black one
         carved from coal shade of his hair

In training    He loves pretending he is
A layer of skin    Peeled from Death's moonburnt

Shoulders    Tonight he is resting under