the all-nighter (rain dog) [2011]

umbrellas are open as locked gates on campus
rain is just beneath them     running rubber pains
I accept immoral need and the distances
from cafeteria     to vegan stir-fry

down the path cracked     hurdling broken festivals
across grounds strewn with antiquated cardboard leaves
salted and seasoned     (these are not cool raindrops)
I am rounded cheap     peeling affected roles

to approach assignation     a harmonic
(in this late crowd     truth is twenty-one more than)
I am sudden in the white mind of a sensei
and sodden in the fry cook's imagination

(where there is acknowledged estrangement     wasting
warm engagement with vegetables and TVP
tossed and peppered     with garlic and tamari
devoured in a rush     like so many lies)

tied     as plum ribbons around denuded trees
we unwrapped corporeal discomforts of youth
grinning lips shining     (a betrayal eaten)
blunt water washing a tapped physiognomy 

like a written list of fuck-flattened mattresses
a quick spike of synapses     and a dry smile
is a leap     or at least the rhythm of one
played naked on a doumbek between splashing thighs

this droplet trickling is a lost blood lullaby
or     a swollen cask of rain is the answer
what's drowning me is not in my hunch galoshes
but in secret    crouching between bird basins

checking unscripted kicks     (this is me caught wet)
loitering in the garden when the dog ran out
"what were you thinking then?"     as the morning skipped
I am delinquent    in the clench of a fist