O'Hare airport

(4 cups of coffee into my trip home)

This is not a good idea

O true worship, O man of length, the strength I gave was never spent.

If persons black were lent a noose, so I could I clear my name, the effect was cursory; I never was the same. Poems black as clouds, shave the faces of the proud. Othello was my cousin, I carried his sword and dagger, I walked in shadows until I reached the cliff of the great green adder. "This is Sunday morning showdown," and the walls shook like spiderwebs. I heaved at smoke and breathed in cellar dust, wrote encyclopedia entries for acid and rust.

She wore a cloak of silk atop her oiled golden tan. A frog and a gazelle traded jokes in Hindustan. I would calculate with simpletons; they crowned me Foxy Beast. Now insomniacs contribute to my pot of charity, it was explosive death I traded in — it was mindless liberty.

I dig for hours before I find the straighter line, open cans of worms and evaporate the brine. I wonder 'what will come?' but it's hours late, I looked up words like 'jaunty' 'facade' and 'defenestrate'.

If cobras could combine into a mild lamb, if pomegranates sprang like diamonds from my hand - why I'd spit out choreography and smile at the moon. I'd drink mudslides in the hammock and name my firstborn daughter June.

I call you contradiction I call you labyrinth, I call you late for dinner with an absinthe after dinner mint. I'd drink ovations with a monk and we'd scan the crossword pages, I'd make a pact with Lady Silver, and her first cousins, the Sages.

Collect a few fragments, polish them a bit, point them at the ocean and then be done with it. That's better than most, who obsess with spelling, grammar, father son and holy host.

I'm winding down and that's what makes me glow. I hammer till I shiver, live on love, process grief through my wretched liver. I can breathe now. I always knew this, but did not know how.

I loved many but insufficiently, never a soul completely, until we ate street meat at Queen and Spadina on Saturday evening. Lady, treat me as your lord, slave, lover, knave, lad, brave mad sad king. I have nothing except you - and I will give you everything.