was a truly amazing man
he pretended to be
rich
even though we lived on beans and
when we sat down to eat, he said,

he lives in a house with a swimmin
and says the job is
killing him.
he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem t
get rid of

this head like a saucer
decorated with everything
as lip to lip we hang
in mechanical joy;
my hands blaze with arias

I still get letters in the mail, m
men in tiny rooms with factory job
living with whores or no woman at
booze and madness.
Most of their letters are on lined

I got in the shower
and burned my balls
last Wednesday.
met this painter called Spain,
no, he was a cartoonist,

this time has finished me.
I feel like the German troops
whipped by snow and the communists
walking bent
with newspapers stuffed into

the history of melancholia
includes all of us.
me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,

the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,

of course, I may die in the next t
and I’m ready for that
but what I’m really worried about
that my editor—publisher might ret
even though he is ten years younge