The way you turn your head towards him
is an unsolvable problem.
It’s a fraction of
the fading sunset,
a subset of this exhausted era.
The logic of your new mascara
and the rosy gloss
spread across your lips,
in the applied mathematics
of the over-dramatic,
lead to the conclusion 
of our relationship.

Why is the value of your ex-
undefined
and your feelings the variable
in the pitiless language
of zeros and ones --
of zeros 
and the ones
who leave the zeros behind?

The way you glow when he’s mentioned 
is a futile equation.
Fractal versions 
of my worst moments,
a sequence of sordid hypotheses
along the axes of impossibilities
that cut through the extremes of desire 
to shame and out liars.
This is the applied physics
of the chronically heartsick,
the shortest distance 
between two disappointments 
unspooling in a line 
on an average day 
in the mean time.

Your heart’s already
accounted for,
minus me  
and adding him instead.
But when did I
stop counting in your head?

[And here's a joke that didn't make the cut:
"You put the fib in Fibonacci"]

I Stopped Counting [as always, click on title for lyrics]

Before the entrance to the pub stands a doorkeeper.  Inside the pub a small crowd has gathered:  Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and Mark Eitzel, Morrissey, Robert Pollard, Paul Westerberg and the elusive Don Lennon, the smart men from Wire and the surly Philip Larkin, Paddy McAloon, the good folks of Underworld and Yo La Tengo, Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, Ian Curtis and Lisa Germano, Annika Norlin, Stew, Mark E. Smith, Babybird, Rilke, and still others.  To this doorkeeper comes Marshmallow Fortresses, who prays for admittance.  The doorkeeper thinks it over for a moment, then answers, “Not now.”  
	Many days and years pass.  The pub door is always open, and through it he hears one miraculous song after another.  Marshmallow Fortresses repeatedly asks to enter so that he may  commune with his heroes, but the doorkeeper always responds in the same indifferent manner: “Not now.”  
	In time Marshmallow Fortresses grows old and his hearing begins to fail.  He gestures to the doorkeeper, who curtly asks, “What is it this time?”  In a creaky whisper, Marshmallow Fortresses observes, “How does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has begged for entry here?”  The doorkeeper bursts out laughing.  “Are you serious?  Every  aging Smiths fan has been crowding this door since forever.  But, as for you, I’m now going to shut it for good.”

(An altar to Franz Kafka)   

tl: dr    Wire did it all, and did it all better


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