Come on, let’s not do one more round, one more shot. Let’s not go out and get lost, and as our breath turns to frost, let’s not lean in for a kiss. Baby, I’m sure about this. Before our lips start to miss each other’s lips, let’s desist.

Baby, let’s not*. Let’s not get lost.

In the city they got ways to feel alive – we won’t partake, or cling together as we breathlessly collide. Go home, it’s late. And all the towers with their deathless beams won’t light your perfect face. And if I surface in a dream or should alight outside your place, I wanna see all the lights out.

So please, just stay the hell away from me. Go ring your bell some place that's clean. Before this film loses its sheen, I’m calling scene.

Hey honey, how about let’s don’t? We could climb up the walls, but we won’t. We could wait up for calls on the phone, but we’re not really all that alone. If you run into me, you should run, cause it’s not gonna be that much fun, and I’m not going to be anyone. We’re just gonna be young-and-dones! You can watch Asian markets succumb to the level that we won’t have done! All the trade winds will blow and get blown to the exact degree that we won’t!

How about let’s don’t? Put down the phone.

And don’t you call about a comet or confide with friendless haste. The syllabaries and the sonnets won’t elide with endless grace. And all my candles, like an old cathedral shrine, won’t light your face. And if I slip into a stream or turn up dry outside your place, I wanna see all the lights out.

So please won’t you quell that shit for me? Cause I can tell this well runs deep. And it could swallow me like ink, and I won’t be seen.

Though I'll admit that I'm a sucker for that pout, why waste your faith upon a candle that you, puckering, blew out, now just a wraith?

What if we disappeared into the underground -- the lairs of this place? Do you consent to be my Queen-Under-This-Town, threadbare and stained? And with a garland and a wreath we could be crowned – cause we won’t have taste! Are you content to be the thing your life surrounds? If that’s the case, I wanna see all the lights out.

*Please forgive me, I never meant to be unkind. I think that love is like creation – its final enemy is time. Because once we did start up a brawl and then get tossed, and when we crawled to your apartment, your legs were crossed and then uncrossed. And later I searched your lids, the lines there scrawled, for something soft, for something thinner than a fingerprint and lighter than a moth. But since it hid, I was left grinning in your loft. The earth was spinning on its axis, and we were safe, or so we thought. But even us sinner’s kids, even we know, at least we ought, that even globes don’t last forever, despite their admirable sloth. And who knows what we’ll see when the synapses get shut off, when muscle memory relaxes and there is blood inside your cough…and onwards years from now, after the flood brings Spanish moss – what kind of creature will appear then? What manner wings bear it aloft? And I was grateful for the stillness of that four o’clock before the morning makes a sound and after somebody’s been shot. There was snow on the ground, and I’d somewhat improved my lot. I was done digging the world’s biggest hole and filling it with scotch. And so I held you there; my hand lay inches from your crotch. I was astonished by your hair – I think that poets call them locks. And what I’m trying to say, though you admonish, you may scoff – I was completely unprepared for how I felt when you woke up. And if I looked away, if I was crying, it’s just because there in throes of Sunday morning, there in the glow that wrapped us up, you were enough.