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In the middle of a shotgun-apartment
that baked on the center rack
of mid-city,
drops of sweat fell
to beer-spit wooden floor boards,
cleaning tiny circular spots
where it was ashen
from cigarettes and memory
beneath our bare feet.
There was another yesterday.
During a winter so raw,
that if it were any colder
I could’ve disengaged.
We worked like radiators
all through the night,
through day,
and back into the night we made love.
We were warming the apartment
with the help of an open oven
set on 550 degrees.
In another tonight,
we woke up sticky with salt.
I went to turn the air on blizzard,
but the window unit was gone.
In this neighborhood
the drug freaks in the crack houses
would give the skin off their backs
for a five minute high.
The air conditioner was replaceable,
but would never be replaced
Descendents of Nova Scotia,
we were children of the Cajuns
that ate everything and anything;
Crawling, swimming, slithering, and burrowing
with antennas, teeth, and claws.
Survival was in our raging blood.
Our bed sheets were in the freezer
wintry and the threading was crisp.
We were ready for bed.
There was a lost hole in the inflatable mattress
where the air was escaping.
I would pump it to maximum capacity,
giving us an hour of sleep
before we felt the petrified floor.
Then it was her turn to pump
and then mine,
then hers,
till it was off to work or
the plasma center;
moving like sloth’s and aching with
cell phone signals beaming through
our bodies.
It was teamwork.
I found the hole and patched it,
the antique, air-mattress was never replaced.
There was another today.
I woke up in the empty bathtub,
where I would sleep when we were fighting.
On the cool porcelain,
I slept like a baby
with the black mildew and rust stains;
And maybe it was the smoldering season
or the scent of urine and fried foods
the smell of New Orleans,
or the unsightly track marks
that led up my arm,
or the mysterious blood stains
on my t-shirt,
or the scratches on my back’
but she erupted.
“You don’t love me anymore!” she screamed
with red retinas and steam.
Ill prepared and delirious,
I imagined us as two carnivorous dinosaurs
biting, tearing, and rolling
simultaneously loosening a chunk
from the other’s throat.
We were mopping the floors
of these slaughter houses,
we liked to refer to as hearts.
And beneath the clouds of the Mississippi
full of violet city light and electrons,
the whores, pimps, and hustlers
continued without interruption
because our suffering was so painless,
from the distance
of Canal Boulevard.
“You love your books, records, movies, and your dope!”
She was a blitzkrieg of madness.
“You love your writing!”
She smashed the keyboard over the modem,
some of the keys went rolling like dice.
I half-expected the keys to spell an answer to this…
It was her computer and I am certain
she replaced it.
“But you don’t love me anymore!”
She had me convinced.
Conviction of that potency goes a long way.
She could’ve been a used-cars salesman.
I watched as each and every vinyl I owned
was smashed
into tiny, shinny, black sharp bits of
Mozart, Chopin, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits.
“Those are all replaceable,” I said.
She tore into the guts of my bookcases
My books, graphic novels, and poetry;
Miller, Bukowski, Carroll, Plath, and Kerouac
became the bones in the furnace
of the fire she built.
“Those can be replaced.”
My film collections,
David Lynch, Charlie Chaplin, and Fellini
were rolls of haywire tape
torn, popped, and wrinkled.
The plastic shriveling on the fire
resembled everyday of summer here
and I had enough,
“Everything in this room is replaceable!” I roared.
I pointed at her,
Once my dear
My darling one and said,
“you are replaceable.”
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A Happy Poem
