worth is worth



so I shambled thru the back streets

of town, high, coming from the bar,

and the maple leaves had come out

just enough in the space of the day

to provide me shadow and cover

from anyone who might care to look.

Anger is ugly, God don't like it.

I hadn't seen you at the upstairs saloon.

Don - the old hippie seated at the front

door checking IDs - Don hadn't seen

you either. Nonetheless I had a couple shots

of Cuervo and a Lone Star and then Don

and I repaired to the back fire escape

and burned what I had twisted earlier at the studio,

I'd thought of smoking it with you, maybe,

had you been around, but Don was ever

gratetful, and I felt like I had a use.

I rifled another Lone Star and then,

as I said, shambled out into the early

spring night in search of you.

In the back of my head was the idea

of all the ancient artifacts and writings

of Ur and Urek, the birth of civilization,

destroyed and beheaded by vicious mobs

blessed by the U.S. military. Gone,

castrated, immolated, all of it, the gifts

of antiquity smashed, pissed on, raped

and ruined in the space of 18

hours or so. I also had a terrible picture

of that wisp of a Seoul-bred graduate

physics dude crawling all over you,

on top of you on your mattress on the floor

in the soft candle glow of your single room,

his spidery lanky fingers and hands in your gold

hair, tattooing your flushed bare arms and thighs.

Your breath warm and wet on his collarbone,

coming out in the way I too had often heard you sigh.

That strange, cerebral, insectoid character hearing

that and having that. Having you. I just knew it.

All signs indicated. I figured I might

go back up to the studio and smash

my sculptures, all of them, all of it.

I thought, I am a machete and I am

a handgun. But the death of civilization

I guess has saved both my life and yours

and his too because once this booze and skank

wears off I am going to smash

nothing but instead retain it all

and somehow try to make something new