VI The Lovers

"Lovers may go by
Like clouds up in the sky
Never to be seen again,"
The chanteuse chanteuses.

And was it all a dream?
And did it perhaps just seem
To be real and pure and joy?
The imagination imagining?

Hot tears are in my face;
Where joy was, a hollow space.
And a little brown and white dog
Follows me into an exile's sunset.

The Worm Moon

"What a state you're in,"
They say as a stray
Tear dribbles off my chin.
I say, "Pay it no mind."

"You have offended the gods,"
The Priestess says,
"You are banished from the temple
To wander beneath the Worm Moon."

Cast adrift in an eyeless desert,
I sit alone on a metal bench,
A cup of coffee and a cigarette,
Staring at the blank hills,
And they stare blankly,
Eyelessly back.

This is how it ends:
Not with a bang,
Or a clang,
Or a "hot dang,"
But with a faint hiss
As the air leaks out.

Nothing remains but a marionette;
A ridiculous figure as I trot
Across the empty parking lot,
Clutching a box of laxative
To lubricate the fading bones and skin.