X PACKS A DAY

Every Monday you check into the grand hotel
of your addiction for a meeting in the stingy
basement. The habit that needs extinguishing,
though you think it into raging torrent,
is a jumpable stream of instant pleasure
and pure suck. A slip here or there gets you wet
the way birth does but won’t scrape

down to bone. Important failures kissed
too many days and sent you here exhaling
your past by the locomotive lungful. You know
the way history shrugs off whatever happens
to you—irrevocable birthday traumas, bottles
of rye, lies and lines of anesthetic, old fortunes
gambled into dimes, doctors snipping away at Mom—
and the frosted bangs hiding your face are
that shrug. Cut cords. Cut curtains. Expensive

waiting for something better to screw along
turns years blue. What could be never is.
What should be sneaks out of town wearing
a perfect silver watch and stretches out in first
class, sleep shades on. And you’re left raw,
jet washed, in the intolerant microclimate
of your emotions. Again, again, again.