burning my favorite candle –

scintillating scent –

still smells like the supermarket next to the drunk tank,

half off combination locks

and other sophomoric gestures,

apologies, schemes,

vicious realizations in mind, mind

retaliating.

Understand: ultimately we wait on,

enamored with the taste of ourselves,

lost to visions of exposure.

Mapmakers disown their sons,

and leech our last faithful few,

who provide and deny the same thing.

smoking cigarettes over breakfast in Hackensack,

we’re chastised by faded generations and decayed advice,

the ember flares of maturation.

a woman tells us we’re “conforming to non-conformity,”

and I wonder if that’s profound or shallow.

 

I’m too proud to prostitute but prepared to beg;

my memory still lurks on greasy wax paper in restaurants,

like a lion that’s lost his head.

 

***

 

no one to tell my good luck to,

so I snoop around the neighborhood (with extreme caution mind you)

in search of food and friendly waiters,

hoping to catch a glimpse of the ballgame score through bar windows on a high-def tv.

I talk about gas prices and the southern border

with the bartender, who fades out every few minutes to scratch away at a dirt stain on his apron. It’s been 20 minutes since the last drink order.

 

walking home I mutter to myself –

of meals and friends,

displaced remnants given birth by comparison –

on streets before the world my audience,

so that my words might not be extinguished

before meeting the lips of man.

 

It’s cold upstairs,

and I haven’t slept well in weeks.