Ben Passikoff
 

Just Say No
 
 
 
 
 

Married by crack in candlelight   of streetlamp sodium, legs   enlaced in he-she stupor, scarred   by nails of love, arms,   by equal wounds of coke, horse.       After animal spiraling   of eye-kneed jeans under   separate dying moons of spent   streetlamps - a loll of coma,   tumble of night into the coffin.       Like tendoned winter trees   the lamps stand black, each iron   arc a bow of parenthesis   enclosing empty cement around   the urbanly chorused.       Poured into their pants   the lovers locked in other love   unhear the music in the walls -   colliding chords of rats   trilling their busy teeth.       A pyre is necessary here,   a fiery pause betwen the gods   of church and equal coma - crack,   heavened by leaky ceiling, priested   by landlords licking endless rentals.

  (c)Ben Passikoff 2003