The Third Bullet (maestro)

Last night:
a palm of crushed-up Prozac and a throat heated by tea.
This afternoon:
a black folder polluted with words staining stanzas.

You’re the maestro, as you pluck away at just-tuned
strings and scribble with charcoal in between chords.
Now your light ivory scales clash with my lazy Disney.
You’re the arrogant maestro, with your slender fingers
and passionate pupils dilating like a morning of marijuana.

Laughing against your sweet basslines snips the chains
of dark days plaited together like your fingers and mine.
Amidst cigarettes and sunshine you’re a fake cloud
of mysterious 1963 bullets and freezing oceans in the rain.
I’m sure the smile sailing on my lips is obvious to them
as I ignore every bit of groundless advice and clumsy sentences.

You act as though I’m the gun and you’re the assassin.
Where’s my trigger? I won’t know until you pull it,
because they were all Lee Harvey Oswalds: part of a mass
of confusion below the sands of obscured truth.
You’re the real thing, and I’m the scrap of knowledge
that the world would die to save. I’m conceited because of you.
Here the covers leave my skin and you flick the lighter.
Written: Friday 4th February 2005, 9:08pm.