I'm Not In Love, I'm Drunk

I've seen you in a dream, or a thousand or two. 

And lost you to morning, as I always do.

Lost you to an alarm clock too early blasting.

Or the fury of an angy trash truck passing —

those goddamn garbage men. 

Where are you? Where have you been?

Are you reduced to dreams, to delusory thought?

I've forgotten how to forget, so, darling, I've not forgot. 

Are you alive still or have you lived 

all your allotted years life had in this one to give?

Are you in a bank counting someone's money —

withering, dithering, or in a bar where all the men call you "honey."

Where they all, married or not, take their best shot

and afterwards you're only an afterthought. 

Are you having an affair with a man you mistook for me?

Some married banker that spoke eloquently?

Do still you remember when we sled 

that winter on that snowy hill, all our youth bled. 

When we practically froze, suffered two frozen noses and twenty toes

and came home and peeled off our clothes

then burrowed beneath the quilted throw

like naked amused animals in a cotton burrow.

When we made love until four

until our bodies were exhausted and could no more. 

But we woke up sore just to make love once more. 

Or are you in some library lending books,

or in a law office defending thieves and crooks?

Somewhere reading a love story you're quite sure

that either you've read or you've lived before. 

You have lived it, you've lived it with me!

We've lived it and loved it, didn't we?

Don't you recall it as I recall it, too —

or do I only hold on to that, only me, but not you?

Have you subscribed to the grand notion of moving on,

and in each life you find suitable lovers to futilely feed upon?

Do you live differently in this life than in the last, and forget me merely as a ghost of an affair past? 

Are you in some loveless marriage obscured?

Or meandering through this life dejected and abjured?

Do you drink and hope I darken the door?

Are you unhappily wealthy or contentedly poor?

Do you cry at night and hurt from some hidden pain?

Do you prefer sunny days, or do you still favor the rain?

Do you dress as a flapper for All Hallow's Eve,

because you love the costume, or you remember and still believe?

No spaceman or vampire will ever suffice.

No Elvis, or drunken Jesus. No spook or Vanilla Ice.

Do you hope for me to come without knowing you do?

Do you look for me to come without knowing who?

Somewhere, a mile away or a thousand or two,

at a party I am dressed in a zoot suit, looking for a flapper that's you. 

Have you gone mad and they've committed you, as they have committed me?

In some lunatic asylum or state penitentiary?

Is there a bat or two in your belfry just for me?

I have a bat or two for you, maybe even three. 

Are you in prison somehwere looking out barred windows in your duress —

writing letters that never get returned because you leave no return address.

Are you on that frozen pond ice skating, remembering when

We wiped out and bowled over three families and you vowed — never again.

But we laughed on our backs as we slid to the side,

when we were young and neither of us was dying or had died. 

I'm not in love, I'm drunk. I'm drunk on you. 

Everyone else is in love with someome — so that will not do.

I see you when I drink so I drink and I drink. 

They say it's a delusion to be drunk, but, rather, it's a delusion to think

that anyone else would ever do —

anyone else in the world but you. 

So wherever you are or wherever you went,

you have me in your pocket, buried in the lint. 

Where are you? When will you return?

I'm not in love, I'm drunk. I'm not on fire, I burn.