Voyage

Voyage twenty twenty / The greenhouse gases have escaped and it’s far too late for irony / you rested your convictions on the collapsing coastal shelf / the countess sits on the lounge chair frying in the sunlight / she counts flying sheep and dreams / of what’s on the other side of the ivy / The ghost of the cactus wears a brimmed hat / dressed with arsenic and phoenix feathers / we are febrile and flightless in the land of plenty / The countries part ways, with themselves and with each other / We make cheesecake, place our faith in the kids we failed to protect or empower / but now I want to shrink to the size of a seedpod / drift in on a cocktail umbrella, across the floating tablecloth / like we really loved, like we really knew what it meant to love

A poem reconstructed from semi-legible rainstained sharpie on a folded office envelope, located in the trunk of my now defunct Saturn when I cleaned it out the final time January 2020. The line about irony is a quote from Robert Montgomery, spoken during our many rounds of cognac at the Chateau Marmont last December, the last time I flew anywhere. The line about love is paraphrased from Neil Young.

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