[W T Clark]

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Rev.1

..........For Josh

You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking
but not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in. You talk: as if you're sinking,
I hold your arm. Is it me, or Pentheus now

stumbling after his guide, girlish & blind
with seeing? Still, like him I half resist
listening, since if I listen then I'd find
myself starting to see like you: the fixed

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brave,
more brave than me, with the city's needle-veined
Bacchae who've also learnt not to believe
in Presidents, or free will. Josh, who'd go sane

under the billboards' hectic mania?
or go cold turkey to the siren light?
You are the mask of my insomnia
noting each entropy, each half-life of night:

the blast shadows of bars that haunt us with
absence's red taste. There is no God
you say, who'd give us choice; but still it's this
old work (who'd pay?) that's chosen you: to hold

these ghosts atomed inside you from decay
as what night builds annihilates by day.

***
You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking.
But not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in. You talk: as if you're sinking,
I hold your arm. Is it me or Pentheus now

stumbling after his guide, girlish & blind
with seeing? Still, like him I half resist
listening, since if I listen then I'd find
myself starting to see like you: with the fixed

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brav-
er than me with this city's needle-veined
Bacchae who've also learnt not to believe
in Presidents or free will. Josh: who'd go sane

beneath the billboards' on-off mania?
or go cold turkey to the siren light?
You are the mask of my insomnia
noting each entropy, each half-life of night:

the blast shadows of bars that haunt you with
absence's red taste. There is no god
you say, to give us choice, but still it's this
old work (who'd pay?) that's chosen you: to hold

these ghosts atomed inside you from decay,
as what night builds annihilates by day.
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