A Life Of Crime

Frail friends, I love you all!

Maybe that's the trouble,

storm in the eye of a storm.

Everyone wants too much.

Instead we gratefully accept

some stylized despair:

suitcoats left hanging

on folding chairs, snow falling

inside a phonebooth, cows

scouring some sad pasture.

You know the sort of landscape,

all sensibility and no trees.

Nothing but space, a little

distance between friends.

As if loneliness didn't make us

responsible, and want accomplices.

Better to drink at home

than to fall down in bars.

Or to read all night a novel

with missing heirs, 513 pages

in ten-point type, and lay my body

down, a snarl of urges

orbited by blood,

dreaming of others.