You try to sleep alone in the growing
geography of your wide and useless bed.
The way it ended with your wife was sad
but barely tragic. Your mind is hot.
You wonder if she’s fucking anybody new.
You want to see your daughter running
naked through the house. You want
to see your son again, taking out his
little cock to pee-pee in the yard.

You think of her now as an ex-drunk
might think lovingly of sister rum.
You treated her horribly, you know.
I used to get her letters, asking me
what to do: “There are times I hope
he is miserable.” But all that’s gone.
Your head grows narrow with thinking.
You shake to know it now: that these
mistakes have all been taken away.

Outside the birds begin to whisper
in the trees. The sky is lapping the
city’s shore. You stand in the street
like a deaf man. A girl at the door
in bra and bikini pants invites you in.
You are used to betting everything
on a phone call or a chance encounter.
You take her on the floor. Again and
again, you insert your life giving penis.

There is always the one you flattered to
get her panties down: a modus operandi.
She lay on your tongue like a corpse,
her breasts as white as oxygen. Down
in the cellar, where you rock her in
the orange crates, fooling everyone,
till, without notice, you lose her in
the crowd. Alone again, confused, sure
you knew what this one really wanted.

There is no vanity here. You watch
loose tits move slowly under sweaters,
hopeful, and urgent, of course, with
every one, always loosing in the end.
Your newest letter mentions six by name
-each one more beautiful, the greatest
lay since Helen of Troy, and each one
mysteriously turned cold and tough as
a statue by the third or second date.

So what should I tell you? That it’s
really worth everything, that there
are girls enough for everyone who sighs
and really means it? What do you want
me to say? We’ve been friends since
before all this began. Married now,
I think of when I envied you your
marriage. Now I don’t know anything,
loving you, a friend, no help at all.