Listening to U2 with the fat still on your lip—

 

that pale patience of yours, oh, I could drive myself

crazy from this observation of condominiums to Maine,

old and bony Maine. What’s that song you’re guessing?

I guess it’s empty passion no groovier than last night’s

cigs you’ve beautifully lighted for one more china sparks

at the counter of 7-Eleven. You know what happens

to fat when fingers stay out of love, out of their silvered

stillness? Traffic lights, they turn to the eyes of the law

in tripartite colours. It’s safe and subtle, isn’t it?

How clever the fat moves in princely prose, or

in scripted smoke splitting between your Kerouac

lungs. I suppose you’re a movie star, a gorgeous

hard rain, a motorcycle of flowering acquaintances.

 

The kitchen sink never dirtied, you never cooked,

peeled, dreamt. But you showed me your world.

Ashtrayed the day away. That dear fat on your lip,

I loved it and I wrestled with the night pretending

it’s already 2:30 AM; that no creature of the streets

would dare say it’s another Bono song you’re slanging.

Whether Where The Streets Have No Name or Stay

is slippered on your ears, the test of music is the gape

of a new fish at midnight. Every time I finger-spelled

the words of your breath’s lyrics, you’d say there’s no

perfect word, only car park symphonies

and the heavy pulse of the runaways.

 

And so I learn

the basics of yesterday, smelling

the fat on your lip, its music and magic astound me—

forever guessing the beat of our endless

smoking suburbia.