Paul Ilechko

There Was Nothing Else to Do

When we recovered from all of the excesses of the previous days we sat
quietly all of us together in a room without footprints. and we drank
more rum and talked about the coolness of blue river water

we cut out stories from old magazines scattering them across the oriental
rugs sometimes I slept on the leather sofa and then the old myths
would infiltrate my dreams from the time of aircraft and the durability
of steel

music would drift in from distant speakers a quiet whispering of bird
sounds a narrative in concrete structures that smelled a lot like smoke
laced with a hint of cinnamon

outside in the silent streets we imagined a parade with flowers and
a material sense of afterlife of falsified religion and oaken planks
and metal plates bolted to the quivering timeline colored with the silvery
pastoral of a Fabergé sunset

trapped inside our sanctuary we tried on new clothes before we drank
ourselves to death.