pink in the syringe

you're my junk—
that's the way life should be.
these words, they're junk too
but they don't make time stand still,
the way you do.
and they may be dangerous
but you mean murder
and that's a high wind blowing.
I know. you maybe don't
understand it's the blood that
runs w/the seed ... it's fourteen percent
pure darling—it's a river
of grace pouring silver
through the internal cinema
you're the junk, heartfood,
five years of rushes
running in the blood.
o hell. maybe you do know—
maybe you just holding
to be holding, or maybe
the murder scares you
howling through the abandoned houses
with the slick needles of the one
clear death—you're always
going to be my junk, baby
the movie runs again

Poem from late spring, 1978. The sadness is remarkable now. I read these passages and recognize how the tragedy I was creating became the root and trunk of the tree that I chopped down in the 1980s. The addiction metaphor is apt. And the use of murder as a term denoting sexual communication is perhaps an inside joke kind of metaphor. Nonetheless, this piece rings true in every respect. I am actually kind of proud of it, though I suppose the human to which it is directed would be unhappy to see it in the light of day. Who knows? And, truly, who cares?