AGNOST

Last night’s suck-downs

are killing me.

Triple Sec and Crème D’Mente.

Drink shadows

cause shivers now.

Long before I’m done being a person-

shaped turd, guilt comes.

The autumn sky is deeper red.

3AM, after tenth Blue Hawaiian

I blacked out; I

did stuff.

Not sure what.

Woke up with hair in my teeth,

shoulder gashed.
Last night was Halloween.

I do not believe in the occult.

People gore skull-head pins

through clits,

shove pumice up their ass,

quaff blood,

hack kittens with rust, rest guts

under pillows—

call themselves Evil.

Then they bag groceries,

polite-like, and Have A Nice Day.

But we all fester in the dark.

Sweating,

fucking in candleglow.

We sicken ourselves

in private.

Must apologize to her. Don’t know

whose hair was in my teeth.

Also sex wash

on my sheets. Yet I am certain

in our breathy blackness,

no one else around. No devil bedeviling

me. No angels dive

to save the girl

from my tricky pulls,

slippery claws.

She must hate the way spit reeks,

vanished with the damning dawn.

You…

I am in pain. Had to tell someone.

Need succor, maybe even sympathy.

Gonna collapse or something.

Had to tell you.

Nobody’s going to Hell.

—November 1995