Trifecta Dentata

Somewhere between the sambuca and Chardonnay
we established where she'd be staying: in me.
The exposed brick strikes again
and an alley kitten's killed
for resting in an engine.

If you don't read poetry
with a shotgun on the coffee table
then you don't read poetry correctly.
If you're not writing lines
like there's one aimed at your head
then you're wasting your time and mine.
Saint Dave of the Wilderness would never understand.

So life, or what's left of it, is reduced
to an absence of the shepherd
in search of billable hours
to cram into the day.

"How do you sleep at night?"
his detractors ask in unison.
"I put my head down on the pillow
and close my eyes," he says.

Now let me help you down
off that cross.