Circumstantial

The neon blinking is a cursor:

You are here, inside the inside,

peeping out from the copse of

three day growth. This scene is

steno: cot, bottle, body stretched

on the wrack of hangover.

In the corner the flaccid dark tossed

on the coat tree is the Grand

Inquisitor. So, as I was saying,

the light's so motey it's almost solid—

sliced up by the Venetians,

it drops, in chunks, on the threadbare

carpet, on the shoulders' slumped hillocks.

Outside the glittering enfilade of days

and nights sweeps down the protracted

polish of the month, women slimly gowned

recline upon the dewy landscape of the chaise

nibbling at books of sonnets. So says this

flat room with its scab of carpet, blank window,

slack bed spring, bottle of Four Roses.

The world's effete, the text of poets,

vivid apparitions in slim pamphlets,

catalogues of words like pennycress,

peasants with simple lives and small

vocabularies who never make it

to irony. There are no flowers

in this world, just the Common

Bellhop, the Corpse and Robbers,

the scrawny text of the chenille

spread, this room, that lint.