Shit and Champagne-- Patrick R

“Penelope! Let’s make our story
Live past this and that bottle and the next;
It’s all going and gone before it’s here.”

Penelope,
Broken bones that cover a leaden pallet
Under the shivering night’s curtain led me along
Down the chalk sidewalk
Into this spotty existence that came about when two people
One “I”
The other “Thee”
We
Met in the street.

My spot is in the windowsill on the fourth floor
And below you stand and stare
Wondering what I’ll do,
If I’ll do.

And the crimson boiled skin from a night of five dollar beers
And ass grabbing—smacks
Still doesn’t make you think

I want you to stop feeling.
I want to stop feeling.

“Does it sound good so far?
Let me finish it,
Just relax, just watch
It’s beauty.”

“Naiveté” you say, you said, you’ll say
I can see it in your eyes through the dark.
My name is Black
Your pores and teeth and perfection absorb me.
“Now, Penelope,
Be serious for a moment,
I’m really going to do this.”

Spotty vision taps my spine and tells it to spill
And I can almost see your face covered with specs of gray and red
“You’re shit, I’m champagne.”
I can nearly hear in the city tide noise
Periods and exclamations looking the same for a while

This leap of faith from the window sill was destined
To end in my questions.
Will you catch me one coffee date?
One afternoon at the beach, one internet moment, one hijacked plane?

Spinal taps with boiling red, gray
Gray and gray and more void
Filling the crevices of fingernails and eye-sockets and...
There’s no time to see your flaky skin,
You step back,
And Black falls deep and hollow onto the head of a “no”

With these concluding remarks
All that is left as substrate and shit
Is in the nostalgia for the window sill moment.

Let’s name it:
Feeling: A life.