My last blonde one went packing today
Silently resenting that she couldn’t fold me up also
And stuff me in her suitcase alongside her mascara & hosiery
& leopard print skirts
when she finally filed out of my door
this morning
I noticed her note on the end table staring boldly up
At me in stark white & blue
   Upon picking it up, I noticed it said the same thing
& somehow they all left me the exact same note.

Putting on the coffee, I can only suppose about the landscape of their hearts,
I can only assume this bitter transgression was wrought from my own hands
   for all of them to write out the exact same farewell letter
   in that puffy blue cursive handwriting
   that the blonde ones often use
Accusing me in the epitaph of our romantic arrangement,
The front page headline from the nightly news of ther hearts
               -Has it come to this?
For all of my blonde ones to scream the same thing in their
golden-locked redundancy?
          “You’re an asshole!”
that’s what these notes always tell me
they scream      “You’re next!”
                              “You’re next!”
at my landlady as they screech out of the driveway.

And with my first cup of coffee in the morning,
I’m left to weigh my guilt. On my first cup of coffee
I’m left to gluing back together everything that she had
smashed on the floor the night before.
I’m left with only remnants, & reminders of good intentions flown south
I’m left with a cooling cup of coffee & steadily filling ashtry.
   A blonde abundance, smoked down to almost nothing

          -O peroxide………..peroxide
               primped and pomped
               & vacuous eyes
I put all the hundreds of blonde jokes aside, because
there’s something about these girls that gives me the idea
that they used to cut shallow slits in their wrists quite often
when they were younger. They used to swallow every pill
in the medicine cabinet, only to awake, stomach pumped
into the wistful & worried eyes of their parents.
   And after you’ve seen all of the preparations necessary
to make the meal, they’re surprised that no one has an appetite…

The last of the brunettes
left a damned long time ago.

it’s been years now, & I still don’t see them in the bars
or down the street walking ahead of me, just so I could
catch up real quick & say hi.

and they were the best of the lot, too
Girls whose names I could have easily tattooed down my arm
one after
the other.

And you know,
one vein just flows into another
& it’s mornings like this that always put into blunt perspective
& everything fits in a childlike simplicity.
One vein, full of blood
connects to another,
& flown into yet another,
unlocking tributaries of passage
& nerve endings of constant current.
& this process goes on & on
feeding into it’s own self
until finally the vein pours the blood onto this
nexus called the heart.
this heart is the pump, that beats
& keeps all of the blood moving on through
into yet more veins
          so this whole process can continue.

This heart beats,
& sometimes this heart
beats you up.
leaves you in the lurch & the constant ebb of vanity, or common sense.
   That’s all pretty practical, all elementary really.
& I don’t want to sound illogical,
                         nor do I wish to be redundant.

               …it’s just that
when a man still misses his brunettes
                    and the last of his blonde ones has just left him

                              he’s in no condition to behave
                              logically.