For My Regina

rhea rhea regina lacrimosa icarus it’s our child-song you keep making me repeat the nonsense phrase because it tastes good in your mouth. Like a full meal of sounds, even if the parts don’t go together, like the beets and the ice cream we’ll pass off as a two-course meal before we go out drinking.

Contrast our healthful endeavor to the junk food noise of the 2-train. To sit in a sea of the terminally hip and simply terminal. Rocket underground back into the fractal where you can be an asshole because, Seriously look at this motherfucking jacket. Do you know how much it’s worth? Do you know how much I PAID for it? …at least those are the words on the street.

rhea rhea regina lacrimosa icarus what can we give the city that it doesn’t already have? Maybe you can offer it your good looks, but you spent them at the supermarket, and now you just look referential. On the corner the rain will soak us through, wrench us sideways, but in a city of everyone most people came prepared and we can hitch rides under the oversized umbrellas of day traders all the way out to where we need to be, which is nowhere yet and that’s fine.

Hey momma I was thinking, just give the city your phrase like a gift, like a sacrifice. Like a barley and oat cake, maybe it will get us past the dogs at the door. Pay the ferryman, pay the cabdriver, remember your jacket, break change. rhea rhea regina lacrimosa icarus

Babydoll, those words were from you, and I want to keep them, hold them, just my own, since the only thing you can give me now is now anyway.

Matt, 2004