-the rareness of beauty and a recollection of distress-

the midwest, the night was clear and you were cranky.

you went out with the girls,–– a night on the town, but

beforehand, I watched you dress, curious as to why

you consciously chose to be with me.

I was mesmerized by your attitude of not realizing

the beauty of your reflection, brushing your glistening, jet-

stone hair with a smoothness as if you were brushing

a measure of silk spun from the boiling of the worm.

I waited at the face of the television for your return,

and when you did, the evening and its anticipation lost its clarity.

we went to bed at the same time. it was late. you were drunk.

you stank of coney island wieners with meat sauce, and extra onions.

the sour stench came from deep within your stomach, upward,

beginning at your wormy intestines, and outward as you snored,

wheezing through the coagulated interior hairs of your oily,

coney island wiener, meat-sauced, and onionized infested nose.

I wanted an escape from you, to beat a fast retreat like a yellow-

belly under fire from a hyper active foxhole.

I wanted to be back in the "Spindle City" fantasizing over the young,

fascinating, and oh, so jewish, Joy Leibowitz, who I'd bet a million bucks

smelled really good when she went to bed.

looking at you in the dread of your immediate faults I wanted to be Laszlo Toth,

bopping your nose with a mallet just to keep it quiet so's I might get some shuteye,

but even under such distress, I cautiously went to sleep believing

your beauty would return to me sometime after the clean-up procedures

in the forgiving light of morning, and it did.

the coffee perked electrically, the eggs crackled in their olive oil bed, the mouse

with its prize of cheese was on the lam from the huntress cat, and as the turned

milk was poured into the sink's open drain, the romance came back to me,–– 

shuffling through the kitchen portal no more than half awake in pink fuzzy

slippers, and yawning, and yelling.