Urban Eclogues

1 Adrift in the middle of my years, I sit in a corner and drink. I eavesdrop a tableful of girls romancing their cell phones, workshopping love’s abstract particulars, while football plays on the big screen; I listen like a thief in case the women know the score. But I never could tell. At fulltime I walk home like a motherless child. 2 Witness is a solitary game. There isn’t a thing I have left to say but back in my room I ring like a singing bowl, empty and unable to stop. You’re in nine kinds of pain, my friend; you know the twenty-seven strains of despair. And your lovely hair has fallen. The moon at my window is a rusted shot, caught in its corrupt trajectory down. 3 The world was always someone else’s oyster, a metaphor I never could prise open. All I’m good for tonight is to let the night pass, while beyond me the world peters and my friend fights beautifully like a trout on god’s line. The usual idiots are still in power. But they’ll keep.