Bulletbored, I stayed in bed.
So wrongly ever seemed to churn things out!
Grand old waterspout coming my way
I sing and sang to my half-broke brain.
Rather be spruce-bowered under a sun
than dead, but the cold world’s rather made as if
a hundred ghosts are asking up
and down the aisles of a blacked-out train,
whether I never liked them around or not.
Back there, far behind me? I splashed.
Time was, I held a woman laughing,
happy and sunmottled all in the waves and
cresting castles moated blue around us.
Wide open, time was. Bodies ago,
till now. Now, he’s a lonely pup
who thrashes filthy, like so: night through night,
I up and dream my downstairs thoughts,
while across the wallpaper lightning creeps
its fiery tarantella. Truth:
if this is not hell it quite resembles it.
If I didn’t feel so hapless small I’d flee all
vows, all crystal hymns, all—Oh, I see.