Having a beer with you

is so much better than having a coke with you 
because I like getting drunk and so do you 
and then we can be sick together, 
jabbering low-lifes trapped 
in our swooning gazes, our lips 
wavering between one and two

while Belleville and its neon flicker on 
and off, each kiss a jump 
cut between the infinite angles for entering 
your eyes, and I cannot decide
if that is me within your pupils
or someone else, someone smarter
and funnier and hotter who just happens
to look like me, just as the you 
behind my eyes is someone you have never met,
whom I first saw as Psyche in the Tate,
a drape of white and gold,
which I must have brought with me when I moved, 
because I found her with a lemon and a parrot
in the Met near all those summery seascapes
and you don't know how happy I was to find her
again as Bethsabée in the Louvre, albeit
involved with some guy called David;
and around then she began to speak
with your voice and I could touch
her hair and take her to the seaside

It's so nice to have known you
before we met, as oil on canvas,
and I'm not sure what medium
is the feeling of being wrapped
in your arms but anyway
thank heavens you won't visit
these galleries with me so you
and she will never meet,
just don't look into me
long enough or you might see her
behind all these bottles beckoning,
gleaming green on the shelves,
1664 - 64 - 64.