Falling In Love Again

It can’t be helped when the

chemicals react & smash us

into other animals. 
You never wanted

to do much of anything

but then you've been drug
to the club & just 
as the strings swell 

they call for the same

song she’s been singing

for almost 40 years.  It’s a sham,

of course, this course set in motion

by your parents & their parents before them.

Traveling through time

can seem almost unforgivable.  You give in

like a stray dog put down in the streets

for howling.  A black cat carved

into your arm.  Takes us

to the reunion tour where some might call it

voodoo, but you know all too well

the different forms of conjure called forth

by an old song or even
a certain pattern of stars.
A bad habit is too sane for a man
like weather, an arctic spirit 
nailed down by the polestar
digs a deep groove at the perimeter
of its leash.  A sad tune
is still music; the noise of a fan
& the tinkling heat
is a ransom note, a random
mote of recollection amid
the general miasma.  Your 
second wind broken 
on the crystal rocks
of someone else's Shangri-La.