Love, In Three Parts

                                                              I

 

 

Nineteen, stoned, impressionable,

I found you in the basement

watching my cigarette,

   we shared your bottle of wine,

       ate a bag of mushrooms

You stole your boyfriend’s keys.

 

We fucked,

      Under a nazca blanket

by firelight on the beach

living and loving,

for the first time

 all night

In all my life.

 

Smoking Winston’s,

and watching the sun rise

over the emerald green lake

tangerine shaded sunlight

skips across the waves

illuminating our faces.

gaunt

tired

happy…

in love.

Within a month we’re living together

       Starving artists,

I write,

       You paint

we push grass

just to buy bread

Never make rent

         but we deal the landlord blow,

So of course he lets us stay.

frying grilled cheese on a bunson burner,

no tv,

We watch the opera of the street,

in torn up poker chairs,

   holding hands,

              smoking,

                  fucking the nights away,

                              or dancing

on cobbled, rainsoaked SoHo streets,

through a dextro blur

lips shaking and

hips shaking

to jazz,

   drifting out of a club

that we’re not allowed inside of.

Truly this is love.

I fold a paper rose

from a napkin inside

Of a brickwalled coffeeshop,

     Because Valentine’s Day is here,

and all the dealing money’s gone to cigarettes.

But you appreciate the sentiment,

   Take a black and white polaroid picture,

Hang it from our best

clotheshanger.

 

Truly this is love.

                                                                                      

 

                                                                                    II

 

 

24,

        pilled up,

                        disillusioned,

I sit in the movie theatre alone,

flickering light of romance film

slaps me in the face,

as I look down two aisles at the back of your beautiful blonde head,

sitting there with a military man.

 

When you come home,

to our resin streaked,

yellow walled

apartment,

    you’re too tired to fuck (me)

so we just sit,

    drinking leftover champagne,

in unshatterable silence.

You get mean when you drink,

I take a valium,

fall asleep with a smoke going

hoping to burn us both alive.

 

I don’t know anymore,

   why it is

we stay together.

 

There’s never food in the cupboard,

  we sit waiting for wellfare,

needing the needle desperately,

You vomit in the sink,

junk sick.

I hold onto my stash, keep it secret.

  the poker chairs no longer have cushions

I sit and smoke alone,

watch the ever continuing street opera

while you screw the landlord,

  because we just can’t afford his coke anymore.

That lovely polaroid

is now just a coffee stained coaster

and a wilted,

dusty paper rose

   sits forgotten

atop a broken toaster oven.

 

we don’t dance anymore,

because you say you hate jazz.

 

surely this is still love.

 

                                            

 

 

                                                                                              III

 

 

27,

        s   t    r   u   n   g        o    u    t,

                                             p     a    r    a   n   o   i   d,

you left me in the desert,

tangerine sunlight flicks through

dome windows of our spaceage

     submarine trailer,

and a tinfoil hat

sits atop my now greased hair,

because you said that now you loved the monkeys,

wanted to escape grey men.

Blind Melon plays,

on my dad’s old transistor.

     Our battered pickup truck’s gone,

         so are you,

          so’s the dope.

             you left me three vicodin,

               half a pack of cigarettes,

                a wilted paper rose, covered in ash

                    and half of an old polaroid,

                               to remember you by.

I sit in Nevada heat,

   shirtless in ripped jeans,

          smoking on a poker chair,

             and sucking back the last green gatorade (your favourite)

                    

 

I spark a spliff.

Abandoned.

Propertyless.

Vultures already circling,

my long broken heart.

s   u   r   e   l   y    t   h  a  t     w  a  s   l  o  v  e.