Unhappy Hour

Unhappy Hour

by to a party where I knew you’d be,

dudes bobbing for boyfriends, eyes shining

like candy apples. I want to be a lamppost,

or the history of plumbing. I am tired of being

mysterious. You are drinking rum next to

the laughing skullheads and I am unhappy

because I am dead and I miss you. Once

a year, day of the dead, you think you’d think

of me more often. These people shoulda

dressed up as their best selves to mix and

mingle in the courtyard garden. If everything

is green then why do I feel so blue? I would like

to be a plain-faced man, living with you quietly.

Leave the party but you can’t hear me you can

no longer hear me. The dead are boring.

Enlightenment is boring. We can read the minds

of dogs. We make the black cats scatter across

the grass. There is a better party where I am not

a ghost and you are not Aquaman. I am like

a pornstar, we are all of us pornstars aching

to get back into our terrycloth robes. Gives me

a headache, all this intellectual stimulation.

It’s cold out tonight. I am here by the back wall,

in the museum of the afterlife. I would like to

be a flickering cowboy. I like the live music–

we only get the recorded stuff here. I would like

to be alive again. I would like to say something

about grace.

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