MALACHAI AMONG the WANDERERS
An old man sucks from the bottle of his ferment
at two brutishly before the meridian; he waits
for a muse to grab his groin, tremble him
into poetry but the lights glare
what comes
are the Wanderers
of too many colorless
dreams, blank screams
of thrashing limbs.
The Wanderers
shouldering large sacks
of things never done
in places unvisited,
chances not chanced.
He smells them,
crotches of wet
wet horses ridden
then stalled without care;
he does not care
where he sits
imprisoned
in flesh
barred by his bones.
What comes
are Wanderers
overdressed in
inaccurate gray,
pearls in their eyes,
moaning his mistakes.
He watches them
skirt through shadows
under the drapes of his lashes.
So many nights
So many nights
of vomited misuse.
So many nights
sharing his wine
with the Wanderers.
So many nights
studying the metrics
of never success,
the steady trickle
of his fluids running
down alley walls
into sewers.
He is dying
from his useless pointer
upward; from inside,
outward he is dying.
Another damned night
of endless failure
he spends
shallowly
gasping for words
to fill the void
of sleep time
sleepless