Leaky Body

The burnt August ceiling led me to them.

In the late-night cafes where morning tore at shallow dusk shadows,

At riversides spindled with nest-frames of iron and light,

In leather-stool bars that face the rim, the speeding fall visible in the lip of the glass.

If youth has anything it has everything.

Fresh vacancies that line the halls filled by

who? Ever and ever and ever.

Kaleidoscoped flesh and bone above me, below me, beside me,

Libraries of blank page on which to overwrite.

They were not happy with that.

So on each thorned towel and sweated sheet they marched

sunken tracts that whorl name into the name,

brand and bind in one.

Retinas seek the cauter dreams when the picture kills to remain, so,

I’ll burn again; the sun will see me some day.