To Venus or the Sun
You have driven me
To my pair of once-optimistic knees,
Once full of faith for you—
Knees which still believe in God,
Who floats like the mist
Next to the Hyatt building across the street—
And I waited for you
With my solitary pipe like a character in “Godot.”
Once a Jesuit priest in my 14th-floor bell tower
Like Quasimodo
Loving you like an unmedicated madman,
I am now a sultry James Dean
Desired by 22 women.
How I wished on a Cracker Jack box
And 40 stars which twinkle
That you would love me.
I believed you.
You said you would call or email or text
Me, my mortal coil and my lonesome soul.
Must I wait again
For another Wednesday night coffee club?
If so I will not ask you to dance
To the Tchaikovsky waltzes
Like Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Nor will I dance with another.
I will listen to the two former drunk speakers
Then slip down the stairs like Zorro
While you wash your steel coffee pots,
And I shall drive home in my white Honda
Praising the four wheels of my car,
And I shall write 14 poems
And draw a picture, a still life,
Like Henri Matisse.
I might think of six shots of vodka
And love like young Werther’s,
But I shall also consider your voice
Which I shall never hear again.
Fuck the coffee club.
I have bones,
And they will lead me away
Like an astronaut
To the center of the sun
Or once again to Venus.