twenty-two

drunk on mouthwash it’s funny

the kick the very muleness of it

funny

gangling and gawking and pimple-scarred and beating on the breast of manhood with jagging f*****g knuckles you’re funny you’re a man you’re funny

you’re funny, man

and the jokes the saliva spray

you taste stale beer on your upper lip beaded into the crumbs of a nothing moustache

you’re tired but you refuse to feel it

you’re tired because you don’t want to dream you fear them 

you want to writhe to pulse to hate

and she’s shooting her glances and you’re ignoring them

and you’re lost in your blood lost in

THE RUMBLE OF A LIONHEART

screaming youth shooting from your eyes

neglectful sleepless angry

wheeling walking death

you’re hot somehow

and she’s still looking at you and you’re wondering why her mouth is creased and

she’s breathing heavy through her nose and there’s a whiny whistle and you remember an afternoon in the dying bluster of a high school summer when you nestled like tired geese into a patch of daisies and kissed the sweat from each other’s foreheads and exchanged airs and you were breathless and thrumming with need and love and tangled desires and she was queen of all the cosmos, green-eyed and frightening and yours and

ah, here’s the pizza.