Elsewhere, I Guess

Playing too close to the edge –
I’m praying a quatrain pops out of the hedge
on the lawn of my untended poetic garden today:
I’ve been elsewhere, I guess.

Though I’ve stayed pretty much at the same
old address, I have left to the last squeaking moment
the task of reporting I ask of myself –
the work I require of assembling desires, aversions

and whiffs of the sweat of whatever just blessed me
or cursed me. My verses desert me.
Like lovers who lie on divans, unattended,
they’re done with excuses and couldn’t care less

whether I stumble in to caress them – undressed.
My nakedness isn’t a draw anymore. I try to implore;
they’re unspeakably bored and depressed.
I’ve been elsewhere, I guess.

.