Why

do I love you so and regret my winter evenings spent alone in Calcutta as the smog rolls across the river and churns up old sorrows best forgotten and drowned in the cream being whiplashed and the coffee being stirred among the familiarity of snug old ghosts and darkness? Why do I love you so and miss my beats as I strip you naked in my dreams and ravish the wonderment of your soul like grapefruit punch? Why do I always blow my lines when I write to you, my youth galore, my sadness wine, my fairness cream, my winter anew?

tonight

the door opens and I’m about to enter when you ask me to caress your mound and I’m so crestfallen that I tuck up like nobody’s business and look at you with wild-eyed wonder when you explain you’ve got to catch a flight to nowhere and do I mind withdrawing my nothingness stuck on you, it hurts so much and besides it is not sure enough where to enter? where am I going my youth like Oedipus, where I’m going like billy-o?

nostalgia

I kneel to you as I must, the sky lowering itself along the river mouth of Calcutta, the sun lackadaisical and alone, I kneel to you as I must in the only manner I happen to know, your eyes like Calcutta my favorite defeat, our loitering along school in winter and the ice candies of summer like the distant city lights of Calcutta my ignominy and our evenings, our strolls and pavement trees, I kneel to you as I must in the only manner I happen to know