About Face

About Face

Striking a pose you've practiced too long
in Toledo as you were thinking of rolls of
butcher paper,

All the same you remain in bed with
yourself and another lover every night,
a date that's guarenteed,

Silk stockings covered with bumper stickers
are draped over the shower rod,

You no longer yawn when friends speak of
grace , glory, deliverence from the centers of
enterprise that stop being useful and instead
become a yearning, roiling rash,

A power contained by no walls
withstanding, instead you feel
fear, a dry blood flowing from
a wound where it feels as though
something had been lifted , a spirit
stolen from you and riden into the
night sky by grotesque fear,

The moon wears a skull mask tonight,

The match trembles, and the pose sours,
the lines around your eyes deepen, ravines
of exhaustion, each fold a rut where a wish
was burie like small change in old purses,

You're alone on the ceramic floor,
telling a joke to a profile,

Imagining low angle shots, a soft filter
over the lens.