a bevy of complements

I wake myself this morning with a wake of longing:
I crawl to the edge of my bed
and glance down with some
displeasure at my flabby belly,
my cavity-colored teeth

flavored with cadmium grit.
I smile at the bruise on my neck, the Parthenon
of creased sullied & wrinkled sheets
drunk with the smell of you last night.

The room has erupted over the years

with clothes & congenital fluids,
and our year wears itself well, will become years
and rest in the repose of years with mornings
that are not this morning. This wake,
this vigil is a ritual I've repeated
many times, a sacrament
of last night's beer and a desire to let work slide,
a craving for Jim Morrison's Other Side.

In my bathroom, the mirror sucks.
Ain't exactly a bevy of complements.
Naked in the window of my living room
on this side of my third-floor glass
I think of you, of slapping
your pretty ass. Soon, you'll slap mine.

Dust motes floating in the sun-filled air
make their way, nowhere, fast.

In the morning,

underneath the spoken thing (I love what's true)

this--you--the thing I miss the most--
is listening to you sing. The morning moves

to afternoon.

I better go put some clothes on.