She told me not to watch my hand

i.

We were eyeing something to pace:

A pendulum, a face tucked into sleep, Soffee’d nurse’s feet.

Craving a cigarette, like an orgasm — to move with purpose.

Opening and shutting doors, windows, wards,

back and forth, tides, gut and moon,

and great mouths leaping to extraordinary conclusions.

I only want what can be counted on a hand

so the other can ash it, forest fire,

tamed at man’s — Is that what I am?

ii.

You bring me to your lips

like a poet

and make me slick like a comma,

thick like a coma

a phase of sarcoma.

A freckle we didn’t fear.

A freckle I kissed.

‘Something to cry over,’

you instructed that night

with whiskey-beard confidence.

A palpitated swagger while passing

Memory Lane.

‘You waste breath with that shit.’

iii.

I want something new.

I want something you and something new.

When your time moves faster than mine.

We are old. Wrinkled. Used. Health and flu.

Rose red, violet blue.

Death is latex hyacinth. An impotent muse.

iv.

They won’t make a movie about this.

With my being such an ugly crier and all.

With freeze dried street fight nowhere on my face.

‘Focus.’

Find your axis

in a gurney wheel.

Fortune turning fast, reeling at corners.

The devil and I getting dizzy.

They, white waistcoats and legs, shuffle us by green-arrow exit signs.

Every one three, two, one paces from the next.

‘You can wait here.’

Among the linoleum.

v.

And like clockwork -

minute and hour,

syncopated dissonance,

this UV intermission

dims into a candlelit dinner set

for one.