sixteen ninetyfive
happy people are all alike
every unhappy person is unhappy in her own way
almost as if to make the point
kate spade and anthony bourdain
hang from their snarls like the last leaves of fall
but you my small big furry faun
come stay with me
there are so many rooms so little space here
in this house and soon each place with plastic straws
will come to break the camels' backs
why must each word be a frustrated repetition
an empty ring recurring with its entry point effaced?
you'd like a resolution to the dawn? go on
and pull that party parachute according to tradition
in unison we'll state "like this I die!
shall i compare thee to a summer's day?
shall i compare thee to an apple pie?
i love you and your hair it smells like memories
your breasts like challah sanctified
your eyes when you have woken up yet still at rest
your small dog's sour moist thanks
your short but deep and strong iambic breath
you simply make me to forget
my back (fast fractured in tercets of pain
fur on the pillow where my head was and again
your body opens wide to me just like the country
your nethers are a soup upon my tongue
imbrued a touch interminably sour and sweet
a bag of brass pipes of all size unmatched
sits calmly by your sleeping feet
and undergarments hang from antlers
like so much prey
the light falls heavy through the tilted slats
and while I sleep i dream one day I'd like to meet
that forest jesus he'd take me by the hand
your panties in my pocket as we walk
discussing politics or latest podcasts on the cbc
but no just as my father drives me home
I hear the stereo insist in leonard cohen's voice
that jesus was a sailor so of course
he'd have not much to do within that orchard
for it's the kind of place where you can't tell it slant
most poems that we call complete are finished tortured
the price of oneway ferry ticket to your house
is sixteen dollars ninetyfive how strange
I haven't counted every syllable inside this poem