Seated at a table in a smoky Bar, I trace the moist ring My beer mug has left behind On green leather buffed by Many anonymous elbows

A year I say to myself as My finger glides, between When we drank here first And now, when we drink again.

Soon we will have to walk out Into the night, into different times Soon we might become different selves, Perhaps unrecognizable beyond Different borders. Those whom I

Come to love leave - perhaps teaching Me to love even more. And those whom I Could have come to love leave as well, leaving Regret like smell of cigarette smoke in one's hair.

But tonight as I take the final sip from the mug The last and lasting thing I taste - often the only sweet Thing in an often bitter world - is love.

The body on finding itself entombed In a strange room tenses, the back arched Like a cat, the eyes seeing dim shapes dance On night walls – did the trout framed in Aluminum leap out? Was that the mantis Executing the disposable male after coupling? Or just a Winchester’s flash fired point blank?

The mind wakes to see rain tapping on the glass And the city spires taking sheet lighting. The heart, With it’s hardened ways, is perhaps offering A confession at an AA meeting or making Drunk-mad love to her again.

On the avenues as night falls And as crowds jostle and seek entry Into smoky night clubs, theatres, stores, And countless signs blink, amputated neon eyes, Now opening, now closing, now opening again,

Over the long reflections of shadow and light Caught in the long mirrors that roads become After evening rain, a man is walking. His heart is pinned over his shirt, as if it were The first bloody medal he was awarded

For unflinchingly taking the wounds of love And loss. He is walking, beyond the city limits, Beyond the suburbs, beyond the railroad tracks, To a place where the sun and moon are her immense eyes Of black pearl, and the monsoon clouds her loosened hair.

He is walking to his final battlefield: Layla, Her body, an unmarked grave of fallen men.