The last poem for Justine  

Justine and me in a juke joint downtown ten fingers on two bottles ten fingers on each other and twenty toes on the dancefloor swingin to bird and miles
The nights got a pulse; irradiated moon, staplegun stars a bead o swet on it’s brow and Justine and me turning like a couple a whitewalls on our way to a fleabag dive motel hissin neaon sign and a RC cola machine in the lobby and a white trash jezebel behind the counter sellin cigs and dolin out room keys to the two lucky contestants who wanna light it up on a cheap sealy, skronk like donkeys till the aurora shimmers in their eyes and then get flapjacks and bad coffee in the morning. Her: hungover stale beer halitosis Me: premature cirrhosis post coital Minute Maid symbiosis.

And Justine was a science project that went terribly correctly right – she read neruda in October and thought about other planets. She peed loudly and couldn’t sing worth shit but she wanted to sing dammit and that was enough for me and I wonder what songs she might have sung had we had the agates to stay together and tear each others clothes off in broad daylight in the middle of a street where people are moving like Holsteins to the trough and in the middle of that traffic of heartless sleeves youd find us – mee and Justine goin at it in the meridian people in fords and caddies and GMC trucks honkin a blue streak damn it all anyways were horny and don’t care and we fuck a blue streak into each other and laugh like dolphins after the rain.

And then Justine buys me a book about horses and I wonder why she knew this why she thought to buy me appaloosa dreams theres a dream – me as a cowboy with a colt revolver and a dusty oilskin a Coles Notes Clint Eastwood rescuing Justine from the clutches of some dirty moustache with an Ithaca 12 gauge strapped on his flea bitten grey half breed lookin like a low rent Tom Mix cruisin’ for a perpetual dirt nap as he eats blazing lead from my sixguns and me an Justine ride off into the mahogany sunset

I was cloud bound with her – I was always flyin over her house wearin a blue tie, my heart in my hand just thinking about how before I die I wanna swim in the ocean with that woman and we’d dance on the beach like stranded octopi and Justine would wear sun stained linen and I’d wear white and say “I do” a thousand times and then we’d turn into seagulls and fly over her house together - swooping at cats and cawing in the morning air

The truth of it was this: Justine we was Romeo & Juliette for about a month, Henry and June for about a month and then it was Archie and Edith for the rest of the time. I know I was a dog and you were no angel but we had a big frosty rootbeer float with two straws. We was a martini wit two picks – three olives each.

I gotta tell ya I’ll miss the 20 years of bad pavement in your hair.

And Justine, this is the last poem I write for you. But maybe not ‘cause you always materialize in the last ¼ inch of the bottle and I ain’t done with that bottle yet and won’t be until the sun shags ass into tomorrow. Tomorrow. See how I feel tomorrow.

© 2006 Mike Gravel