Mischief

Mischief

He wanted to stead the contrast on
the expensively dressed hotel guests
and the freedom of walking around
in the leather halter top that the young ‘working girl,’ wore.
There was something in each of them he wanted and understood.

He steals thoughts of you all day, lost in the afterglow of senses
stealing the letters of the ouija board to write messages
he can allow himself to hear, stealing all day long
like a teenage shoplifter skipping school.

All the nights, parties, and lovers, he takes.
The house of good, evil, and fame, he marries them.
He binds them, like rubber bands, into a tight ball
of joy that he lies and calls pleasure.

He rambles and steals foreign bugs
then cries for certain that he is going to die.
Thieving kisses and support for his life.

Right across this America, he takes in the night
under the earth. Somehow he borrows tectonics
and shakes the world of lives and global maps of hearts
flinging them into lakes of fire before dawn.

He sells some things with an odorless perfections
wounds and spasms from the earth,
the breath of fire and ice.

Wrapped in hotel sheets,
he awakens early enough
to see sobering stars and
steals them and gets high.

Then there was you slim, lithe,
smooth as a slippery a bathtub without a mat.
He stole your heart
like it had a secret name or password
unaware
someday he’d have to steal his own heart back from you.