poem for a nurse smoking a cigarette against a police telephone box on 8th Street 


maybe memory, in the thin, soft blue light of a medevac helicopter
time was hidden, hemmed in red, evenings at 1950s jazz clubs 
        & '20s debutante balls and such;
i am suspended under the barometer of an incense-stained crucifix―

the mood of the dry martini at the precipice of one's heart: 
        portraits of lust and false-heartedness
in these elegiac Happy Days suburbs, words pinned like butterflies 
        in a museum case...
her heart to sorrow; one is left wondering if the girl actually 
        exists or if―

as if i were a kite, words failed, dragging a dead deer down 
        a diary's spinal column...
yesterday's wake of ramshackle boat sheds, of heron-haunted estuaries
and its mise-en-scène; that is, say "i love you" again, 
        loudly enough this time―

tonight, Old Farm Pure Rye Whiskey w/ a well-water back, the last 
        summer rainstorm before shanghai...
transistor-amp guitars & rickety piano squalling out a steeplechase;
it's a beautifully horrible resolve; a kiss frustrated 
        from a Mills & Boon mass market paperback


if it's morning now, 7 o'clock, stethoscopes & tourniquets; 
        uninstalling IEDs from a chest cavity
white knuckled & stationery-deaf from a Gustav Mahler symphony

endless early-70s FM calibration in contrast to modern erotica
lampshaded at the thresholds of verschärfte Vernehmung, 
        breath hushed like a dead chandelier