Hangover

You’re concentrating on the
butter on your corn muffin;
undulating and unctuous sin
quenching the coffee’s
acrid shadow loitering
between your teeth and
drifting on the nicotine.
Marlboro hoarseness hanging
on your vocal chords
like the corpse of an octogenarian
burlesque dancer; adagio
in the guilty glimmer, glimpsing
last night’s lapses of judgment
crushed in your grimace tic
furrow your brow behind
clenched eyes and try not
to watch that train wreck again and again.
Dull gong thud head pounding like a
beggar stuck in a closet
with a million blackmail photos
that no one wants to see.
You found ten more ride tickets
the day after the carnival closed
but you showed up anyway and
wished you had brought that girl
from high school so you could
both be naked on the tilt-a-whirl and
you could eat cotton candy together
and you would be the hero that won
the water balloon race but you didn’t
because you were in the backyard
twenty-five years later looking for your pants
and wondering if the neighbors could hear you
pee on the bittersweet.
...but you did see the sky
when no one else but you saw the sky
and no one else but you could see the sky
the way you saw the sky when
you were looking up at the sky
and thinking about how only you can see it
until you needed another cigarette.
Sometime after that,
poetry seemed like a bad idea
and your bed seemed like a better one
so you woke up and found the corn muffins
and swore you would never do that again
because there is just no poetry in it but
there is poetry in this butter.
So go look for your pen and be done with it.