I’m part of a quick waiting line in Circuit City
A doe-eye register-girl asks me for my Visa.
Words are the only instalment plan the heavens
left me. I should cut my losses with the lethal truth:
girl, my best friend was cremated today in Queens,
that spot on his back was a trick the angels traced:
in zero-air, the pale trembles of tree-fallen snow
gave back what the chapel fires made of him.
Loitering, waist-wrapped in winter wind,
I faced a long third down without a back.
He’s air now. I left the other mourners to wish
my buddy back. I’m buying hardware
to amplify a hollow. I can revel in the speakers’
ambisonic sound, refuse elegies, and spin
Hendrix at Winterland, The Who in Leeds.
I’ll windmill pain away, drop a Gibson on
the hippie-bed, pour whisky on a bleeding palm,
and make like wise Montaigne: stop wondering
about the why, and feel the deep self-going
drop of it: write no-closure on oblivion:
it was a whisper, listen it was a scream:
because it was him, because it was me.
