I find I’m none too different from
this picture of the Captain plastered to the wall
of every room I’ve lived in – gun cocked, ready to kill
these beautiful men whose sweat
is kept in a suitcase-drumkit banging on stage. I know
that any one of them could walk up to me at any moment
and pull my gun to their chest, stroke me
on the back of the neck and it’d be over. That’s the real
in this. And when I’m taken off the wall, these memories
of mine that never happened will bunch at the foot
of the bed, leaving only repetitive textures
raised like the crumpled drafts of continents
that never made it. Antarctica over and over, Washington
breached at the hull and bleeding ice
into the Pacific. I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do