Your cigarette blown words
lodge firmly in my back.
Losing a toe or three
keeps me swaying on the beam.
My fluted mouth stiffens.
I drop more than my shirt
in the parading maze of dazed revelers
sweating in the Carnival swelter.
Twinned but not;
best friend for never.
Dissected from skin to bone.
The stripes on my pants are all wrong.
The paper mache grizzly,
the Army green ginger,
neither fits.
Your German blonde elevates you
to the balcony scene.
Keeping my mask carefully blank,
I fall into beta position.
In the garbage piled streets,
no one wants to vomit alone.
