Last month, the clock chimed
twelve and the Quaker
Oats guy vomited into
my hands and what came out

was not oatmeal, but tens
of pounds of the most
potent cocaine this side
of the Hudson River.

Don’t ask me how I know these guys.
As my mother likes to say, I
just pick them out of the street,
fully-formed,

gentle as roses and
dandelion-scented shampoo. 

I would write a true love poem if I loved you. That saying— If he writes you a sonnet, he loves you. If he writes a hundred sonnets, he loves sonnets. That is, I don’t love, not just you. I have these phases where I believe that love is the center of my universe and then the center collapses. I should probably go to the love doctor. I should probably stop over-interpreting the love poster over your bed, the one that becomes shapeless when you take off my love glasses. I should do a lot of things, but my center is collapsing. Perhaps I felt the most for you when we recreated Klimt’s Kiss in your love bed with the love bong uncleaned, the love orange uneaten; when you reached for the love pillow that had fallen to the floor and placed it behind my head. When you tilted yourself down to kiss me, and we made love like teenagers. When we didn’t have sex. I would write a 10-step love poem with pop-up elements. The love doctor told me that love is not something you can say out loud. I explained to her that I played you that song on your guitar, kissing like we used to do. She wrote me a prescription for love Chlorpromazine. When Grace asked if we were together, you said “kind of.” We crushed love beer cans on our heads. We dropped love cigarettes on your carpet. You let me place my hand in your back love pocket and we stood like a welcome eternity. I hoped that this was a tertiary love poem. I would write you an implied love poem: your smile from the corner of my eye. I would write you a so-many-loves poem, all at once. Because it is snowing and Toni told me she was moving back to L.A., where the L does not stand for Love, and I can’t keep losing friends like this. You know what I mean. I would write a probable love poem if loving precluded collapse. I would write you a love poem if I loved you, I love you, I love you, I love you.