Soliloquy for a Muse

I.

I’ve spent my life being crazy
for women that I rarely see.
It’s not normal, but I like it more
when no one shows up at my door

to remind me of songs I cannot sing,
the sorrow breathing in everything,
and the stupidity of my ambition.
There’s a subtle hint of rapturous friction

in the stories that the people tell
of all those separated belles.
It’s nothing that is not assumed
so I shut myself into a room

and smile at my empty walls.
I’ve turned them into waterfalls
when searching for a holy place;
or clawing toward the cold embrace

of vodka from a corner store.
It makes life less of a chore
when one can murder ticking time
with large bottles of cheap red wine-

the kind that whiskey lovers drink
before they lurch towards a sink,
and sometimes reject mysteries
that cause our loves and hopes to freeze.

II.

Shall I tell you who it is I mean?
I will paint for you this maudlin scene,
though in truth if I had a choice
I’d run far from her feathered voice.

I will not ever touch her curves
or know the way that her mind swerves
when she wakes, hung over, on a couch.
I like to think that she would shout

across a darkened room for me
to bring her something, anything,
to alleviate the painful thud
of poison swimming in her lungs.

I tell her, “Love, please do not die.”
She laughs at me and asks me why
she’d want to be in such a state
if death would not let her create

a place that’s free from all the pain
that twists itself into our names.
I say that what she says makes sense,
but it makes me want to take a rinse

in chemicals that kill the blood
and leave none alive after the flood.
There’s no response, and then I know
that she is not here to make time slow.

III.

My friend says these girls all sound the same.
He thinks I give One different names
to foil meeting anyone
who cares for what I have become.

I pop my middle finger’s joint
and think that he may have a point.
I could tell you her identity
if I was lacking subtlety,

how her soul, like Icarus, is free,
and our minds entwined like growing reeds,
but telling would take too much time
and requires a story that isn’t mine.

All I will say is who she is
and that will come right after this.

She’s a fading wisp who must not be kissed,
the reason the devil is an optimist.