Rock, Paper, Scissors

Before the razor, came the rope, became the pills…
Or wait, maybe, was it? the other way around? You can’t remember now,
Your full moon face casting shadows on the worn brick,
slender hands working frantically as if threading knots in the wrought iron;
Scrambling the combination to see what it will unlock.

Lit red by the neon from the burlesque bar across the street, my own bare hands appear to me to be too stout, clutching tightly to a book on essence and resting on drawn knees: desperate, ugly, weakling things,
And I think to myself (and myself alone) that the sequence doesn’t matter much…

But then again, in my case anyway, It was ALWAYS jagged glass –
All those Little ditches dug with a juvenile exaggeration,
The tender insides of a forearm hidden easily in sleeves,
Nothing so extravagant, understand,
The blood sometimes drawn where our similarities begin to end,
No big deal really, not the same thing at all.

Watching as you watch your own ghost dance on the wall, I feel
ashamed for never having had the guts to truly wish I weren’t;
all those mythic moments of murderous sacrifice exposed at last for the fleeting forgetfulness to insist on gratitude that they were, momentary deaths to your total and complete need for…

Yes, that’s right, that’s it. Neck over wrist, wrist over pumped stomach,
That’s how it happened, best two out of three:
“Ro! Cham! Beau!”
and that dark companion of yours shifting with you as you do from one foot to another, as if in finding balance you will also find the answer,
And my ass growing cold on the fire escape grate, as I listen and recall How all those old selves tried to die.