the tea bag is where i left it on the kitchen counter, a depressed transplant heart
leaking brown bile, still a
pillow for a child's head

and
not to seem rude--
but may i ask why you are allowed to be so happy?

what makes you so free and easy, so many exclamation points in even your most
thoughtless welcomes, as if your heart weighed no more than the feather
tattooed on my back

when even my heart weighs tons, heavy pewter in comparison to that falling feather?

why are you so free: when did he not do something similar to you?
and to that part of you that is no longer virginity but is neither reputation, that part
that can be taken and not returned but cannot fully vanish without your permission

although permission is eagerly sought and even for the most fragile of us
the ones hidden behind thoroughly obscuring mantillas, not just my scrap of veil
that became too easy to displace all too soon

we sometimes grant it so easily
doors after all being much easier to unlock than they are to lock
and lock-and-key being such a loved and petted notion to
us all

i wish i could make off with your joy and swallow it
until it was absorbed by my blue blood and became mine
heat and life!
some semblance of pink would perhaps return to my cheeks

finally to resemble a Klimt girl
as i always wished i could
as i've always secretly believed i do

but without the telling gush of
the phosphorescent stream of life fluid

that gives them that liquored glow,
their liquor being the only real kind
what i take to be liquor is really just
tomorrow's sickness and sorrow

replaced instead by exhausted tea bag,
still a pillow for a child's head

every morning i wake as if i were just born
and my chest aches with all the sadness of
everything i have yet to be left by
have yet to pay for
have yet to lose
and have already lost

every morning i wake the patient lying on the operating table:

force myself out of bed
seek my own ether
and tranquilize myself

relying crippled on that exhausted tea bag
a bowl or two of pot so that my head feels less like
it has been paved to the ground

morning, noon, and night my friends
and sometimes more
but try not to judge:

there is no ward for those of us who
cant remember happiness

no transfusion and i so wish i could have a transfusion--

heat and life!
finally to resemble a Klimt girl

i think that the truth is that my sadness is
the sort of thing that cannot be watched

no one wishes to be infected by this particularly debilitating blue and i harbor no blame

adjust your mantillas
enjoy your warm red blood and
sometime soon i hope
more than i hope for anything else

that i will be able to wake on mornings
with lightness again

no longer reliant on exhausted tea bag to soothe this
prevalent pain in my chest that shocks me
with its strength every time

and someday maybe to walk without
a train of thick smoke

held off the ground by the attendant incense and match fumes

i have no alibi:
caught pale handed in the bedroom
with the pipe
trying to steal your liveliness

only some you know, i would not take your entire store:

it is a terrible thing to do,
i wouldnt do it