the night I talked you out of suicide
we both knew you were not going to use suicide
and when we finally hugged
it was morning already, it was dull boats
swaying along the canals
turbid bottle green oily waters of the white
sunned peaks

it was you crying on my shoulder, suicide
unused left on the curb,
barges mooing behind the banks
someone calling someone in the court
stirring hurtled sparrows and it was I,

as cold inside as the blade of the
IKEA kitchen knife I had to hide from you.

I wonder why I didn't
laugh at your phony face
then, as I averted you from the balcony,
wasn't in my mind the exhausted
cozy lie of our barren place?

I pictured your tongued mouth instead,
I tightened my tired embrace, I
shaped your sexy grimace,
    as in blowjobs.

That was the barter.

It took me two more years to leave you,
and still today you call me,
offering blowjobs between the lines.

so the imperfect slaves that too often did the dishes,
  granted the point,
defectively tried to be different to portray you,
as you think of yourself walking around in underware,
  being egoist

the fact that no bird is calling in the morning
  before the downpour,
the impression of the builtland all around sleeping,
every animate creature in it sleeping

under the furniture giveaway acid yellow poster bill,
the phenomenal FIAT blue car they want me to buy
  in front of italian bars where sugar bags advertise
ROMAN horse gambling

the first buongiorno of the day as you walk past,
  feeling observed,
and walking as you let your fingertips bounce
over the poles of the gardens gates

bending where everything lays motionless and lights are
only sloughing colors behind the boughs ajar,
you the illusion of a segment of inexact time

so avoid it, so make it last

the moment where you grasp something of the world,
landscape in the concrete valley
necessity to die the sooner the better

you won't believe it but
as she does with millions of lives all around, life
can stand you