by Rob McClure
Didn’t mean to leave you lost in the corn maze
so long,
didn’t know the gown of moonlight
could come caress your candy-bones
and bathe you in milk cherry blood.
Didn’t mean to set the cornrows ablaze,
make you ghostwalk through the smoke,
didn’t know the emergency
path lighting failed
airy hostess you,
dry-ice starlet with a bonfire
of red hair, oh yourself the burning flame.
Taking a bubble bath in other people’s pain
sure can consume a poet’s time,
and looking for you was like looking for my specs
while wearing my specs.
I know you think me a scaramouche
and the poet laureate of louche,
believe me as remorselessly hip
as a cat tearing at trash in a skip,
but I was that gobsmacked,
beyond amazed, when you said
so long
I almost dropped my syringe in the sink.