“I Wanted to be an Absence”

“I Wanted to be an Absence”

As if abscesses could turn

their ugly course,

to hang glide with monstrous arms, spinning shrubbery off a weasel’s grin,

the neighbors drink gin, playing gin rummy with their skeletons,

the third one’s divorced:

she lives in an old peach tree

which still bears fruit,

difficult to bear

with ginger hair in stock

at your feminine robot store,,

ours is a drunken rage

your limbs grow numb and drift away

but that’s okay when you’re headless,

still haunting your own bedroom,

hunting for the scent of our lives,

a disappointment is a disease

a disuse in your fiery sinking fingertips

the pewter aglow with regrets

for what water should have rushed

it must be internalized anger

diffused suffering, immunized

through a colander if nobody cares

because I love you

burnt thumb and tacks

a lucky limerick as blood

one memento to carry you on

the leaves and tall of tick grass

the past will never last

it collapses at long last.

Tags: Nicholaus Patnaude, poem, poetry. I wanted to be an absence