There is no greater sorrow than to recall the misery in time we were happy
– Dante

A belligerent handshake, a reluctantly shared cab.
“You know where to let me out?” Your smile, a dagger,
Mouth unwrapping secrets, your sleeves full of cards.
My stomach twists into a gilded fist, so hard,
Throwing a kiss, missing me, you stagger like a park drunk.
In contretemps to your sadness beleaguered and deflected,
Reflecting my resistance on thick plexiglass between us.

Silly, futile shakers who still Tango, with tight hands I slump over your shoulder cold as a rag doll.
Ridiculous. A slipknot stitching me together, jerking me up and over.
You sit me up down here, and I slouch over a stool, nearly fainting, falling, failing.
A light switch flipped peeling myself off your back, We heard lowing cows in the beer soaked yellow fields,
So you  drive me up to the meadows.
Somewhere, the bags of nothing, value of rice flour.
White, like a spit full,of pigs playing poker.

It’s a funny to hear you laughing at jokes older than
Chicago’s elevated trains and trades slid down so torrid.
You hysterical fowl, scornful defenders of anarchy and faith stop. They take a quick look at me,
Face fell first, my cheek on the dry floorboards.
So cheaply made – she’s broken but a workhorse, so you spend less overall.
My face looks like an unbaked raw pie, a bargain.
As my eyes search in vein for a sliver of sky to take me away.
I cooked myself dry from the hot rays and heard,
“She doesn’t know. She’s not worth a dollar but some schmuck secretly paid.”
Her flesh white and the other, a pink piglet that braces itself,
She then becomes a fertile delicate lily. And no mud, no vase, no shelf, in the flesh.

Twisted into aching, she hurts on the gray cold of concrete.
Twenty-four lines back out west, a speechwriter took his holiday.
Filibuster and revolution on the kitchen floor,
Swinging doors evacuate eight, or maybe 12, but I recall the 64th.
Play it with emotion, singing a cappella of coarse.

Extract your lists. Add the new potion —
Keep it simple, no paralysis, you of weak notion.
Now how to explain your remiss?
Who laughs at love’s sanguine languishing sarcophagus,
They soon find themselves falling far down below –
Grace on a sky high alabaster precipice.