1 New Poem

To Read in Five Years' Time

You live on flashed lights,

distance speculation, temporary

markings in the tribal sets of

our age; kind of dapper swirl

that stuns in midnight hours at

twenty-five but sour-stales by

thirty with the same clammy-headed

pill bottle pound awake-arise rhythm

of slanted beam ceiling, cracked lead

paint and charming irregular door frames.

Those same still-planted detachments,

coldness as some straining affect,

calm passing in raging tumult you never

faced in head charge, sheltered by

sunglass ironies, imagined wit;

how grand to keep believing

some heart beat in same teenage

time, the questions posed by one-off

mid-90s alt-group, pitter-patter

of scraped guitar chords you

could have worn as a halo,

worn as a cloudy cloth,

trail, rag-and-bone parade,

since you cracked the first

meaning of words in chapbooks.