On the Drunken Approach of Morning

At dusk, outside my parents's apartment,
contrails flew in the sky, bright orange
ribbons floating in a grid of triangles:
a polluted map of sky. I couldn't help

but think how so much beauty has its secret
poison; hidden in the molecules of perfume,
pheremones, the bare skin sweating
in the explosive thrust of wanting more,
is a vapor rising up to the edge of the nostril,
a subtle whisp, vigorously erotic, ephemeral
as a kiss pointed into the future--a tar-dipped dart
of hope singing for its target. But love, or sex,

whatever, has nothing to do with planes,
or rarely does, and less to do with me
sitting here feeling buzzed from a few cans
of cheap beer, a mind full of vague questions
and blurry metaphors, but maybe it could,
for the briefest moment, once I fold away
my laptop, finish my late cigarette, and sober up

in the harsh daylight as I drive back
into the town I belong to, all the years there
blurring into the rows of streets, side by side
and never intersecting, as they lead
me forward into, like her parting words,
the unexplained.