"doughnut shop"

"doughnut shop"
written after a raspberry chocolate doughnut by jake kilroy.

i was in line at a doughnut shop this morning
when i smelled your perfume and lost my four other senses,
even though you were states away and years behind me.

it was the aroma on the purple shirt you left the first night,
and maybe that's why i thought of irises, pansies, and asters,
there, memorizing my own breaths,
empty-eyed on the day's special,
counting the seconds until i had to speak.

the years blew through me then, stormy and determined,
as moment after moment crowded into the tavern of my head,
waiting for the band to play, waiting to hear our song now.
the past, scattered about in a crowd setting, cheered drunkenly,
with some rapping their knuckles on the glass of my eyes,
making sure i was paying attention to the brawl to come.

the cold night in Dublin, the near death in Morocco,
the weeks in Spain, the home in Austin, Texas;
they were mapped out in the back, near my neck,
coaxing gibberish out of their stale gums,
to paint a new picture, one that's been touched up
and revitalized as a museum piece out of a barroom.

hope is a matter of personal welfare,
and we sign checks we can't always cash,
wondering what happened to our heart
in the time it's taken to drain the vault a hundred times
and refill it a hundred times more, day in and day out.

where was i for years?
and where was i after that?

everything was wasted, and everything was lost.
everything was reclaimed, and everything was given back.
so nothing was wasted, and nothing was lost.

love is bathtub gin, stirred and stored in the very depths of us,
homemade by hand with directions we write down as they come.
some have barrels, some have pints, but all of us have something.
we must never forget that there are always new recipes upon us,
forever with new lunatics to cook up the wild and the beautiful.