L’appel du vide

   – for a poet I’ve never read.

 

To be drunk always is

never having to be sober.

The blood runs saccharine.

 

When I was young, yet not

enough to justify doing it,

I loved You and only You.

 

The only good stories I have I don’t.

 

Might monodies remember me

that I am, after all, a converso

to Myself, some martyr:

 

Human is not so bad a thing to be,

so Sisyphus, friend, follow me.

Let go. It’s halfway quixotic.

 

---

 

Here

 

Kilroy, whose nose is trodden

and fingers must be broken now,

is wrong. He was not there.

 

To see him is proof of this.

He is faded just like iron ink

patinized on yellow letters.

 

And once letters get that look,

especially that must, they and their ink

become far too wistful to be waste.

 

Kilroy, whose nose is trodden

and fingers must be broken now,

was wrong. He is always there