An orphan, chimney-sweep morning-
black ice just turned to smuts
on the macadam and winter-slagged footpaths.
Heading for home under a bled winter sun,
I am sliced in the belly by
flick-knives of hunger.
Alone, in the empty streets, and ravenous,
without food or money,
I decide my hunger
will be my banquet.
I will fill my belly up on a seductive
emptiness.

My tongue, suddenly dead as a discarded
cottonwood leaf beside the pavement,
is as lightless as a brown paper star-
and I walk alongside a stone wind
careering around a basalt mountain,
alone, and without a soak for quenching;
and that's how I decided my deep well of thirst
will be my drink.
And so, I gulp, slavering at raw outpourings of air
from the frozen south.

Thinking of you somewhere warm,
amongst the flickering silent-movie ghosts
of your family, whose names I don't even know,
(have not even heard),
I decide my exclusion from your aboveground life
will be my closest companion.
I will talk profoundly and laugh exquisitely
with my new best friend-
your ever-so-intimate absence.

And at night, cast up on the deserted sheets
of my aloneness, slab-cold, cotton and unspoiled,
I decide my plodding, idiot self-abnegation
will be my all-consuming passion...
I will cling with damp palms and straddled thighs
to the penetrating ache of our daylight dissection.