THE SKUNK SOBER

I dump licorice down my throat
 and avoid looking at the landscape:
   kissing your face, eating your ass,
     whoever you were, I knew you
         perfectly, and in return
                             I am lofted strangely
    so that the vague and pagan
              about death might dance.


The picnic levels that face out
  from corridors you walked, next to
       the ocean, drinking light
          from the erupted mirror,
           hair combed, ready for
             departure, ready for
                  helicopter
   you laughed with my ladies and everybody
       read the above and nixed it
           with a charcoaled thumb,


--it's too new, then too old,      
  plus it's one too many poems
   about rimjobs--but it's not
   about that, that's in addition to:
   love, it's great, I would just--
    drop a comma.


  My face went plaid with wine
   two American suckers at the
                   windowsill with drinks,
 tossing curses at the powerful
laughing hard, praising the customers of laundry
we painted 9 a.m. yellow ourselves
dabbed in gin to freshen the brush.