Turning away is easy
after a certain arbitrary number
twelve nineteen twenty-seven.
Your lids meet each other, ravaged
flaps of black-stitched skin.
You sleep in a dry well.
You do not wonder about love,
the word is absurd,
no longer taken seriously
by yourself or by any of your friends.
It is archaic, was used by princes
and princesses in stories whose evil witch
always died.
In your stories, the evil witch
gets married.
It's easy, it gets easier.
The darkness in the room
is a weasel curled in your hands,
all muscle, fur, fang.
Through the window, the city spreads out
like a dangerous electric blanket.
Your life hangs black as a bat in the curtains,
drips into the yellow bathtub,
slithers through the intestines of the radiator.
It's not difficult, be practical.
At dawn the sun comes up, the trick works again.
You wake, your face still pressed
to the paunch of sleep.
Outside the ice melts and melts.
The sky is a ripped red sheet.
There is so much to do.
See how far the world stretches back?
It reaches deep into the sky's smooth throat.
No one chokes.
All you do is cough a little.
There are no words to justify lying there,
pretending you are dreamy-eyed.
You get up to clean the sour reek
of sex from your body.