No Bullet in the Gun

words down drains
in periodic impotence
I won’t stop
these dreams
of greatness
and
gutters
beholding treasure and fortunes
in the currency of experience,
but I wonder at the exchange rate
this transaction
-cold and unfeeling
imposes on my soul
where things priceless
have spent their lives
carving out names
for those memories
that have made me.
still I sway
across thresholds
and boundaries
into wooden arms
soggy from drifting too long –
there will be no fires.
these nights are particularly cold
from lonliness and reckless abandon
where events are cut away
in blackness from too much
and weeks squeak by without touch
or words
but it’s of little import
because I agreed a hundred times
in dreams laid out
-a map to the moon
that I would never hold on
when the time came to go home
and now I find myself
tongue tied choking
until
I can’t breath anymore,
unable to believe
there was
no bullet in the gun.