r.kv.r.y quarterly literary journal summer 2006

poetry by robbie gamble
Regrets

Looking up and down that stretch of sewer
Through which I've sluiced this wan, addictive life:
Cooking the books, obliterating tracks
Whooping up while no one else was watching,
Dull to my family all those after-days.
It's all run backwards, all these rising pains
Culled and crafted chronically long ago;
Fits of cleansing, soon overwashed again
By numbing gulps of bitter eye-candy,
Those neon-cunning pornographic trails
I stalked, and when I could have bailed, instead
Chose fog and soundproofed walls for twelve long years.

Now, how to root the numbness out, and live?
Plow on--keep breathing--dredge your love to give.