Patrick Kelly

The sky tonight is bloated with moonlight and
memories
itching for some company,
wind caught in the trees, shaking the branches
like the bars of a prison cell.
My eyes are closed,
cigarette smoke snakes toward the ceiling.
I touch my lips, find words waiting there.
They are the wrong words.
The lost souls of my desire
have hunted me down and are
waiting for me,
waiting to lay me out like a damp street
after a heavy rain.
I have done this to them, left them
hanging like slit drum people in nooses
expecting someone to come along and play dead.
Misery springs eternal in this death camp
of onanistic freaks where
a hand job is as good as a nod
to a blind narcoleptic priest.
It is 4 a.m. in my dream and I go out with the tide.
The storm drains are clogged with filthy bodies
in blue suits and Florsheim shoes
with nowhere to go but god they look good.
Faces of lovers appear to me through the fog,
their heads on spikes, whispering of desolation
and despair and what I have done to them.
This is the way I like it, not
the way I wanted it.