Banana Milk Hotel
How it was skinned-down-to-your-bones coldthe last time I saw you as the taxicab pulled away
and my teeth chattered louder
than any other sound I could hear at the time.
How the radiator in this room rattles from time-to-tick-tock-time
and the clickity-clock wants to alarm itself into eternity.
That’s how soft pat-pit-pat of rain on the window
disappears into transparent sheets and yet hides my obscurity
here on the third floor of the Banana Milk Hotel.
This bottle of rye empties itself into me.
And if I smell bad it’s the curse words from my mouth
and not necessarily uninhibitting spirits’ foul influence. Fuck.
How I’m seated here at the desk with the bottle and the lamp
and the phonebooks full of faceless names and numbers
and extensions and addresses and dots dit-dotting across the pages
and pages, which may never get leafed, but are left or leafed,
and left again with the disappearances of tenants.
How I’m seated here at the desk with your face on my mind,
your neatly shorn eyebrow complete with gold ring,
replete with soft skin that gives way to your nose
before inevitable-as-death rise and gape of your mouth
and how its mundane words could be song to me.
How its mundane words could turn to middle-of-the-slaughterhouse-floor screams
before middle-of-the-middleweight-title-bout fits of rage, 0-to-60 mph, negligible time
every time I stumbled home from out the back of a taxicab or squad car,
depending on how good a night it really was.
How good-bye between us was a knick-knock at the door,
the not-too-subtlely impatient driver telling me that it was time
and my watch said it was time and the tears in your eyes said it was time
and everything felt like was time except me. Jesus,
you don’t have to leave, you said and you smelt like soap;
you were fresh from the shower. Your skin was still wet
and all I could think about was how you would be reacting to my next drunken stupor.
How your face would be all angry and you’d cry that I need help. Help,
I’d say. If you’re so fucking concerned then help. And if you did then I’d want to stay.
How check-out-if-you’ve-got-someplace-to-be time comes at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning
and the bus back Okotoks leaves the station at 12:15 and I’m a blues song in-the-flesh.
The pillow mint mouth taste all over my tongue and I speak the words as I write them,
every little immensity that would comprise a more proper, more formal bid of farewell
scrawled out in blue ballpoint ink on the customer comment card
by an obscure man on the third floor of the Banana Milk Hotel.
© 2006 Michael Appleby