"three swimmers and a bottle of wine"

"three swimmers and a bottle of wine"
written after an evening of long, wet talk by jake kilroy.

three lone scruffy drinkers in a lake,
eating the sunset and spitting out the seeds,
calling them stars in between coughs.
the pills puked a dusty taste on their tongue
and painted the walls of their soft throats
to match their insides of blood and guts.

one builds, one writes, one plays music,
but all are in need of a boat to drift farther,
begging the shoreline to laugh as loud as them;
for all that is good in the world, there is more.
more smooth women, more salty drinks,
more beaches to comb and hair to shake,
more winds to swallow and more moderation.
and so comes the shiny smiles of young men,
there to tell a story without a sneak twist,
but instead growl up the heavens inside them
to remain transfixed on the forests and beds
that they've always wanted to call home.

so they talk of the summers they lost their heads
for women of south america and south asia,
all while shoveling pints into the broken churches
they call mouths, with spirits long torched.

here, now, with beads of sweat crawling like spiders,
they submerge their balloon heads and feel the nerves
of their waning landscape, a painting with no frame,
where surely the artist is on an indefinite smoke break.
and these are the days that count, they sing on high;
so forth the western days of spilt wine and cheese,
cultured in the full sun arc of eternal afternoon,
they conjure up voodoo that is beloved only to them
and realize the mess they've made of ritual and sacrifice -
as any good woman these fools have adored will tell you,
young men live only for yesterday and tomorrow.