Please, I've forgotten
how to hold a pen, she said.
Those were the words that
convinced me to write a letter
from a stranger to a stranger.
So this is a message to you
from her.

She's asking how you're doing.
She wonders if the stars are brighter where you are.
You know,
there's a meteor shower coming
in a few weeks' time, she's
she's asking if you knew, and if
you'd watch it with her at eleven in the evening the Saturday after the next
so she'd feel like you were right there beside her
pointing out which streak held the most brilliant color
and if you're asking,
she's doing fine.

She's wondering if you know
how silkworms spin silk,
because a friend asked her the other day
she didn't know how to reply except by telling herself
that you would've known, so
how do they spin silk?
Let me know as soon as possible, she says
my friend wants to know.
But I think she's asking that as an excuse to hear your voice
but also because she really wants to know
how silkworms spin silk
and if you think jade is the nicest kind of green
or if you prefer hiking or swimming
if you agree that innocence is just untested character
and if you're asking,
she's longing for answers.

She's hoping you don't think of her,
and she's hoping you do.
She wants me to tell you that
she wants you to remember
but she wants you to forget the pain,
so might as well forget everything
because hurt is the price of loving someone.
She confesses that she's tried to stop
writing about you
but every time she sits down to
write her soul into words
your memory slips in and dances off her pages
and she tries to stop it
and if you're asking,
she's trying to find ways to make thinking about you easier.

According to her,
she's quieter now
not just her mouth but her feet,
her hair
her eyes
her spirit
Look at what you've done, she says.
I

I've always been a terrible liar.
Please, I've forgotten
how to hold a pen.

Love you! With an exclamation mark; like it’s far away.
Distant with the things I do and the things I say.
Squandering my time; gone with the wind. A decay.
Every day is the same thing on replay.

I’m awake and I’m caked in
a place where I’ve grown.
Where fights became earthquakes,
the same place I call home.

Molehills became mountains,
and the trees became gallows.
My personality weakened,
and all that was left there was shallow.

A proper diagnosis,
That says I’ll be addicted or dead.
It only took a lifetime of neurosis,
And a psychiatric ward bed.

To be molded by your worst traits,
To be malleable by the bad.
To shatter under the worst.
To be battered and sad.

The air is a mill of hooks --
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun's conflagration, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable --
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.

I buried her beside the clematis
Before the old untidy oak. The sullen wind
Began its circuitous hiss
A mocking presence. A cruel portend.
With fevered brow I pressed
The dark soil down, my quaking hands
My anguish succinctly expressed-
Stubborn fingers torn into blood-red strands.
Putting the ***** away, I went back indoors;
Her corpse still fixed in my sight, I made tea,
Sweat seeping from my pores,
As I drank, my hands again shook visibly.
A storm broke over the nearby hills
Roaring rolling sounds of shame,
Walls of rain thudding on my window sills-
The resonating thunder repeating her name:
‘Lucilla! Lucilla!’
Came each profound clap
Her voice within: ‘You killed me. Murderer!’
Long after the lightning’s crisp rap.
I had loved her with my infinite core,
Her screams scoured my teeming brain,
It pained me as I smashed her beautiful head on the floor,
Her rapid blood fading down a drain.
I died inside as she died my hands upon her neck,
Panting, protesting her undying love,
I gave her cheek a tender peck
Crying that the disinterested gods above
Knew I loved her too.
But, when a woman cheats,
What could an honest man do
In the face of numerous public deceits,
More so when his avaricious friends
Sample her like old women squeezing
Oranges in the market place? She trends,
Or did, for only one, distasteful, reason.
I did what I had to do. I had no alternative!
As was my due, I punished her with death,
And now subsumed in grief,
I strangle in my own dark breath
Now, each night I watch the clematis climb
Study its coiling struggling vines
Fixed in that cold, cold time
And the shallow grave on which the cold moon shines.

I crave intimacy
Not the type that subconsciously comes to mind -
The connection
Between one soul,
To another  
Bleeding pure, genuine
Devotion.
I crave fidelity
An enduring exchange
I don't want to be physically touched;
I want to feel my internal organs
Spark.
I want to embrace it  
Savoring every moment

There's a place inside
My mind I find
Atrocities like to hide
Keeping my heart pure of things that would surely break it

While there's no cure for the curse
The lord's hands are surely at work
Creating a labyrinth of self doubt and confusion making my mind just as fragile as it strong

They say you should forgive your enemy
But remember their name
and I can guarantee that mine is written on every book and on every page
Of everyone I have ever hurt or ever slain
Or every person I have ever met
Written in blood as black as it is wet
They may have forgiven but I never forget

And over time,
My pen stopped bleeding
But my heart didn't