Don't End The Celebrated Life

Tonight I chew gum to spare my tongue
and breathe the song that feels so wrong,
like a newyear’s kiss, wet and bereft.
There are eight empty cans to my right,
one for every month I lost my sight,
one for every month we have left.
I feel like sleeping in my best suit
and glittering the stage with soot,
dragging myself through busfloor mud
and kicking the 22 yearold stud
for giving up the utmost top
shape of his life to piercings,
coercings and the brunette
that slowly drinks his blood.
And I want to do a pirouette.
And I want to smoke a cigarette.
And I want eight private jets
to take eight private parts of me
to Boston, Equinox, Tangier,
where the pages stretch for miles
and the ink all disappears.
Someplace where there is time
to grieve.
Someplace that we do not have
to leave.
Not even for the future,
which is nothing but a word
that corrals the herd
of the conscious hopeful,
the well-deserving frantic,
the sighing romantic.