Down the Light, Down the Bed

You went and invoked the song a week ago
and I was back in the hallway. It was college then.

I was writing a poem for this Hornsby piano
and the squeeze in my chest
I've had since about 15.
I borrowed the cassette from Lisa
and played the piano parts over 50 times
while the tape went thin and the lines came out,
melancholie sentiment about a ghost piano
in an empty house.

Nearly thrity years later I'm back in the place,
no longer young or pretty, my hair long & gray,
and I feel a bit less real every day.

I didn't usually write there in the hallway
across from the dark bathroom,
the future like an ache in the mirror,
my heart in a canister at the sink.
I've laid down that thing so many times—
arranged on the mantle, beside the bread box,
out by the back door trash.
She's like a ghost who won't leave,
follows me into many rooms,
while the pen of my knife scratches this on the walls.

It's what a crazy man does.

And when the words say nothing
it's the notes, the goddamn notes
and their stumbling trills
stepping over me,
like something lost,
floating up the stairs and down.
"I can hear the piano playing
but I can't find it"

Why be so foolish
for so long?