The Game

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Click Here to listen. (1 min/mp3)

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Imagine a haze, like a fog on a bay,
the dampness covers everything in its chill,
that cold to the bone and so sick at the thought
of an insistent muse, her incessant whine
“Remember me, remember our day in Mexico.”

And so in that chemical daze he wrote
forever trying to remember to forget a day,
their day in September – fifty-one when Joan
held the glass above her head and listened
to William Tell her the last she would hear.

She played the game in Benzedrine clouds
and listened for foghorns in the night
but only heard him whisper as he took aim.
Morphine steady, rock-gut cool he shot
piercing the smoky air in the Bounty Bar.

 

            to Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs