What I want to ask is to try

Again, that sick gesture that is,

For some reason, reserved for

Romantic contexts, and not

The ever-swelling neuroses of someone you

Used to play cards with now and again.

Those big, sweeping ones that pump

My blood, probably yours, too.

 

So what’s the hold-up?

Why can't I just say I want

To read Richard Brautigan and

Eat chocolate and peppers and

Peaches and gin and hit on sixteens,

Split eights and catch something from a

Motel pool, watch the automatic security lights on the yucca,

Run and run and run, taste blood, breathe in smoke, alchemize

It into something you’d like better, something that spills

Out of my mouth, dealer’s choice.

 

Four cities later we will come back

To life, to us, at the brothel-diner

I swear I can smell already. I will

Eat a chicken-fried steak and

Forget, for 80 miles or so,

How to be lonely.

 

Don’t you want to see more stars than this,

Watch them all disappear again?