we hustled a lot
old lovers do,
squandering account of cheap highs,
coughsyrup lows,
account of allnight nurse and doctor sessions
Prince and Miles at 16rpm’s scratching along on the box:
perhaps bleached lovers determined to remain less attached.
we laughed a lot
at each other's exotic expensive weekend package deals,
all expenses paid
with or without ever being there.
and we voyaged dreaming of revivals
bedding down in orgiastic tents,
craving hotspring breasts swelling with desire
seducing strangers to survive.
but old rivers
may part in friendship
as hip-weary travelers
who learn yearning,
as lost and old rivers cannot satisfy.
we are two old rivers prefering the silence of
roughing it out again,
this unit
these old rivers
lost, and we are lost
and old rivers,
and is there a place for rivers
constantly seeking oceans?
because old rivers can become
historic rivers
where the light is gorgeous
even here in this parched canyon wash
where we drag each other along
reclusive, adrift.
we have become old rivers
oldtime Mississippi tugboats,
muddy waters that have swallowed too much seed
(swelled pregnant from the knowledge),
waterways that have seen through the promises,
survived the onetimelet’sfeelgoodrightnow’stheonlytimethatmatters passion.
and we have seen old rivers
sweeping along
other voyagers like us,
sliding, scraping,
grasping at forsaken currents,
rivers carrying lovers like us to other foreign ports
to be seduced
by units like us,
still adrift
down lost and old rivers
determined to endure the tides,
or cut loose
and dragged under,
conjoined, heading down the River Styx, where
stygian waters
will whirl and pool what and who we are,
those very waters we foolishly hoped to be
1987
Brooklyn, NY