last breaths

even if it is biannual, more and more

people look to be toasting my death –

and their sweat-prints on the wood

come up like bruises, cloudy tendrils

in ice about to bust and I can’t forget them –

I can’t shake the sense that all anecdotes

involving me are eulogised, nor can I shake

the socks of the beautiful women kneeling in that circle

in my empty bedroom – those holy little puffs

that wax and wane with the pressure

the body attached exerts, the sublime body

and it with the pressure exerted by the mind

engaged in something ceremonial

called conversation, drinking Victorian wine –

that wax and wane like my last breaths.