I walk at night
just to walk.
By dim streetlight
I walk at night.
From city's height
to the river dock -
I walk at night
just to walk.

I love you
like eating bread dipped in salt
like waking up burning at night
like drinking water straight from the tap.
like opening the heavy package in the mail
without knowing what it is,
excited, happy, suspicious
I love you
like crossing the sea for the first time
like something moving inside me
when night falls softly over Istanbul
I love you
like thanking God that we're alive.

[Seviyorum seni
ekmeği tuza banıp yer gibi
Geceleyin ateşler içinde uyanarak
ağzımı dayayıp musluğa su içer gibi
Ağır posta paketini
neyin nesi belirsiz
telaşlı, sevinçli, kuşkulu açar gibi
Seviyorum seni
denizi ilk defa uçakla geçer gibi
İstanbul'da yumuşacık kararırken ortalık
içimde kımıldayan birşeyler gibi
Seviyorum seni
Yaşıyoruz çok şükür der gibi.]

She walks the city
as it wakes.
Under cloud committee
she walks the city.
The river's pretty
as morning breaks.
She walks the city
as it wakes.

Oyster shells of light
peer through the Y
in a bare tree.

Night has moved on
to California or somewhere
out on the ocean.

But the new day, it aches,
the grass drowns in dew.
I see my loved one

in a week, and until then
I am getting a little tired
of clouds burning like sugar.

Blue letters of rain
are waiting...
Reticent molecules,
why are they
unable to pierce
the gauzy tent
that's vaulted up there,
gray and sick?
Caught by the elbow
on the way out the door,
living in a cloud's foyer -
don't they see
my hands moving,
filled with keys?
What silver seed
are they waiting for now?
Blue letters of rain,
sleeping in a sky
dark as a bandage,
the air is so heavy,
so metallic; the whole
city is waiting
for this wet birth...

Watching a **** elm tree
on your birthday,
as it bends and whistles
to inaugurate the afternoon.
The grasses bend south,
& birds make silent shadows
up and down the street.

Restless, I stand up,
roam around the apartment:
your birthday carries the odor
of fig soap, or maybe it's plums -
I can't recall. I pick up books
of poetry, put them down,
pick them up again,
turn on the stove, make coffee,
and wave it at the naked elm
to salute you on this day of yours.

This day - so clear,
so empty: you must fill it.

Drag black stroke
all the way down
in the early hour.

Winter sun rises
late: I'm awake
in this crackling dark,

out on a walk
& starting my day
with the incandescence

of Xmas trees spied
in the windows
of strangers.

I heard it in the evening,
those sad, hopeful voices.
Astonished, I was caught
in a grace. I thought
of the strangest things:
Corso's leopard-apples
& lost watches,
flowers pressed into pages,
aluminum foil and how
once creased it's creased
forever, the scent of a pear,
the scent of hide glue,
astonished as these strange things
rioted through me
uncontrollably, as the music
moved forcefully forward,
however unfinished,
and I was stricken
with a nearly perfect moment.
Astonished, when you said
this was your funeral song.

I love you,
my dear.
I tell it true:
I love you
every day anew.
Let them all hear:
I love you,
my dear.

Swan swing or harp bridge,
by sunrise's purple finger
inside the azure waist.

City wakes broadcasting
red trees, shining pyramids,
vivid blossoms and vines.

The river's garbled mirror
under paint-crane chaperone
soon shows cerulean Christmas.

By the time hips of light
coalesce in the near-dawn,
you're gone - long since home.

I'm burning beside you,
trying to quiet
my hurt mouth-sounds.

Get up and search for honey
in the back of the cabinet,
cursing all the while.

Is this one of those
moments when someone
is about to leave me,

gathering their things
& inching toward
the proverbial door?

Go outside - count stars -
have a panic attack -
breathe, breathe -

catch fire and burn.
If I make it to bedtime,
it'll be a mercy.

Crinkles of steam
unfold from my golden coffee
into pyramids of air.

Just beyond, the television
radiates in rectangles
of submission.

3000 miles away, you sit
in your pajamas, watching
with me, linked.

Everything is sending signals,
if you know how to look.

I dreamed about
runaway horses
dragging the shadows
of early winter through the field.

I dreamed about first snow
falling today in the wood,
collecting in little pockets,
gathering in the grass.

I dreamed you held my hand
through all of it, breath
hanging in the chill.
The two of us, watching

wild hooves stamp and
kick through new snow -
I dreamed of love,
I dreamed of distance.

Sweet woman with black hair
your life is electric
intelligence floods your eyes.
When you laugh for me
your smile washes the world.

Getting closer to you
by breath and romance
like in a storybook.
I'm writing you this poem late at night
while even my candle is asleep.


Siyah saçlı tatlı kadın
senin hayatın elektrik
zeka gözlerinizi doldurur.
Benim için güldüğünde
gülüşün dünyayı yıkar.

Sana yakınlaşmak
nefes ve romantizmle
bir hikaye kitabındaki gibi.
Sana bu şiiri gece geç saatlerde yazıyorum
mumum bile uyurken.

One lifetime is not enough for our love.
But in the days given to us,
we will feast on the sun and moon,
with a dessert of soft snow.

One lifetime is not enough for our love,
but we will be man and woman together
like in your favorite books -
to the very last curling page.

Aşkımız için bir ömür yeterli değil.
Ama bize verilen günlerde
Güneşte ve ayda ziyafet çekeceğiz
yumuşak kar tatlısı ile.

Aşkımız için bir ömür yeterli değil
ama birlikte erkek ve kadın olacağız
favori kitaplarınızdaki gibi -
en son kıvrılma sayfasına.

(After Lorca)

In the cloudy evening,
I was a heart, a heart.

I was ripe with song
when I was breaking.

Oh, soul ... red soul,
the color of desire.

In the sleepless morning,
I was still myself, a heart.

The evening was ripe
with my voice, a song.

Oh, soul ... red soul,
the color of desire.

I  always want you
to know who I am.
When the driving pink days
collapse into anxiety,
& the restless fountain nights
flood the streets
with gray shadows,
there I am, over the keys,
writing to you.
I'm the one who gives you -
across the sea, star to star -
something that you and
you alone can redeem.

You sent me a picture
of buildings wreathed
in Christmas lights,
shaming my city.
Maybe you are right -
& Dublin is the one?
Maybe I will walk there,
under the vacancies
between stars, under
the wounded moon,
under the aching
Christmas lights,
& be at peace.

How I miss you!
The rubber sun
just shines and shines
without you,
mute and meaningless.

It shrugs itself up
into the air,
lights the lawn,
and slowly pillows
down behind the Cairo
& other tall buildings.

Then the moon takes over,
pallid and slow.
It pulls itself into the evening,
inch by inch,
transfixing the dead park,
the silent pavement,
the empty cars.
Until morning breaks
the spell, and the moon
hides away behind
low blue plumes.

How I miss you!
The sun and moon
are no replacement.
They only remind me
of your rhythms,
your chest rising, falling,
the way you put a book down
before sleep takes you.
How I miss you!
You are the center
of things.

I keep my visions
to myself.
You never approved.
The day leaks
onto the tusks of night,
the night tries itself out
onto the street of day.
Visions drift away
into the closer hills.
You never approved.

Things between us
have reached such a low
that I'm drunk at noon
on a Wednesday in October.

But what if I grabbed the sun
for you, shaking it free
from lacy palms of cloud,
and gave it to your greennesss?

Would it be enough to fix it?
Or are all these drams
of Scotch just turning out
dreams in the early afternoon?

The broken symmetries
of the night...
You move,
I move.

You were in the green hill,
chatting with clouds;
I kept a bar open,
wrote you a ditty.

There are little rainings
everywhere tonight.
They slip down into the graves
across the street. It sets the mood.

But I need to get out,
walk the block,
shake this umbilical glass,
join a blind fog.

The moon threatens
to escape its sweater
of noctilucent cloud,
but we're not looking.

"To find a kiss of yours,"
Lorca wrote,
"What would I give?"

The sediment of the sun
isn't enough, stumbling
into cobbled alleys,
getting lost in bookstores.

& the wing of moon
just multiplies into the earth
with gutters of shadow,
forging letters to old lovers.

The tides of the air are fading
on this churlish Sunday,
yet still I haven't found
what I would give for your kiss -

A little hand of silver?
Every third breath?
My best and hidden whisky?
My heart's speakeasy password?
My giant white and silver painting?
A green wing of evening?
This poem?

Drink with me,
at the Mexican restaurant
on the wharf that serves
mezcal with chili salt,
we'll talk about all the things
no one wants to talk about.  
The lost loves, the harsh
self-treatment, the way
you're recovering nicely.
I'll share oysters,
but I'll leave soon,
my mind full of her,
full of her, full of her.

We are unfit
for these lives
as we lead them;
betrayed, moon-sick,
palmfuls of our pills
getting washed down
with the cheap wine
we hide under the sinks;
even the streets
are depressed
under the vinyl sun
with a lion's mane
of cloud, anxious
in the passing;
I don't know
what life I would shape
for you to make you happy,
but it wouldn't look
anything like this one.

The green night
draws a little farther in.

I'm feeling it -
Your face in the black glass,
your face over the wine pool,
your face that drifts away
from my reach
in buttons of smoke...

I'm feeling it -
The wallpaper crawls away,
the red chair moves its tongue,
the green night closes.
It's a bad intuition,
a javelin of thought,
that maybe it's less than OK.

Your face shrugs the black glass,
your face escapes the wine pool,
your face keeps drifting away
in glencairns of Longrow,
in pyramids of regret.

I close the windows
against the electric moon
as language pries me open,
as the wallpaper crawls,
& your face won't stop
drifting away.

There are those children
out your window again,
but I'm trapped over the line
in the seething yellow dusk.

I count the gapped lintels
the next building over,
count to ten, twenty,
it doesn't stand.

I take up post
by the oven to hear
your anger at those children,
those ****** children.

A scent like a sword forged with the acid
of plums found by a road,
the sugary kisses that linger in the teeth,
the drops of life sprinkling on the fingertips,
the sweet ****** heart,
the yards, the haystacks, the inviting
secret rooms in the vast houses,
mattresses sleeping in the past, the raging green valley
seen from above, from a hidden window:
adolescence all flickering and burning
like a lamp knocked over in the rain.

I'm always being born -
even this morning,
when I was thinking
too hard about it,
curing myself at 8:30
with scotch that reeked
of dense iodine
until a bray of laughter
became a choke
as I returned to the scene
of the ******,
pushing a belly of snow
back into the past;

I'm always being born,
blinking in surprise,
drawing this breath,
instinctively turning to you.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
in the mind, in the nightmare
where ink drops from the desk
& splashes across the floor
in the shape of his face
though he's been dead
for years. It's a blow,
a reminder of the grave
in the air: this wound
never closes, there is no scar,
& sometimes no memory
when the nightmare closes
itself as a raven's wing,
more black ink folding in.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
so coffee is the sword
& the shield.
Keep sleep short,
don't dream,
& don't think about it,
just sit still, read
the newspaper you stole
from the building's front step.
The Dow is down,
but tech stocks are climbing.

She was throwing wax
at the sun all Saturday,
ruining all her mother's
best tapers.

But try and tell her
that piercing the
hard blue afternoon
as it moves inevitably
to an obscene yellow
isn't some kind
of worthwhile task,

try and tell her
that the wax arrows
that chagrine
back to the yard
aren't some kind of protest
against a foot's limit
when else she would fly,
try and tell her.

I awoke,
I understood,
I took in the meaning of it,
the meaning of your right foot
victorious over your left,
The Cairo perched above Q street,
the creak of my knee on the stair.

I was awake,
I saw it all,
the piles of fog like white
mattresses after the rain,
the scent of tobacco in the night
after the screech of madness,
the too-proper-by-half letters
I received from you...

I am waking,
I am open to it,
to the secrets that you tell
on a night when you are drunk,
to the wells in your eyes,
to the way you hold a pen
when you are telling me
goodbye.

Come and cure me,
if you can,
vertical man:

there's ice in the glass,
& rain-blacked grass,
as if by plan,

& a loosened sea
is a sad blue band -
this horizontal man

needs your cure,
Dr. A'Bunadh,
so don't detour.

On this red rug
the memories come:
the driving angels of meat,
the ocean yanked
around by the cue-moon,
the antler of sleep
that hummed past,  
the bar-room mystery
that was never solved
on a cold night when I
was about twenty-five.

Someday all of these
memories will fall away
into the crevasse
of my death.

Until then, all I can do
is bring them here
and give them to you -
as an offering,
as a plea.

"Ghost cries out to ghost -
but who's afraid of that?
I fear those shadows most
that start from my own feet."
-Theodore Roethke

It's true that each dark step
in the night-heavy hall
is given to the grave
in the air.  

But never, never accept
death's creaseless small,
cold palm. Be brave -
even a breath is a prayer.

I know that
you can never love me.

But even so,
the glove of evening
slides off as you approach.

So many have tried
this comb - and now you,
the man on the horse.

My lips starve to feel
more than the air
around the sound of your name.

I still mark your birthday
on my donation calendars,
you know.

Now I'm publishing
fractions of you
from 21 years ago...

But you moved on.
You drafted another
in my place. That's ok -

I'm here to tell you
that although every angel decays,
you have decayed slowest.

Come see the dead clocks,
between the blocks of sickness
& the giant silent ****.
You must remember
what you gave me,
that last coarse night
when we were so hungry -
bring it with you,
even if it's raining.

Here in the waiting room
it's beige and safe.
Nothing like the room
where I'll divide my trauma
into lean little cutlets.

When I can't take it anymore,
I'll watch the fish
living in the doctor's tank,
thoughtlessly ******* down
bright quivers
of lamp stripes.

Alex with the "ox-head"
& his dad's old magazine
by the Haitian's house,
stroking our eye
with fields of skin.

Alex, killed at the bus stop
by a drunk driver,
chewing an apricot
as the automatic neon
stuttered to life.

Talk to you
soon, by the river;
forgive me.

Or don't -
either way the children
will carry cheap burning sticks
around the August night.

Wide dollars of summer thunder
brush the early night.
I've messaged you: no reply yet.

The cloud-curtain births
small violent flags of rain
that waver and fall limp
into the hot gray of the street.  

I'll have no part of it -
instead I'll work on my map
of your thoughts that I started
years ago, even before you knew.

This murmur of moth wings,
this secret bed-shadow,
this slouching perfume of rain -
I am haunted.

I suffer these night-knots,
these irradiated musings
on your slow return,
these poems that face the corner.

Haunted men love strangely,
with hearts full of runaway horses,
hands full of cloud and sand,
and lips that repeat fugitive names.

I was born
in the hammer-house,
where the nurse
pulled me blue
into the panic.

In hospital halls
the needle crawls
all the way to maternity.
I laid alone in the crib
like a wet seed.

I was born
in the hammer-house,
where my name
was a black impression,
like a coffee-ring on a table.

God begins to sleep,
even before the sun
pulls its skirts back
behind the tall buildings.

You can tell because
the crumbs of evening
start piling up in the garden
where the pine tree
meets the piano.

Everyone is out
in that final gray hour
that sinks knee by knee.
The door is open,
my nose is sailing
in a sea of sweet basil.

This slavish night,
outlined with anxiety,
running a fever,
claims me again.

My pen's in my hand
and the nib is the child
of heartbreak and distress.

She lives on the verge
of a wood where the shy deer stand in
raining glades, and sunken trees
unroll knotted shadows in the long
hour of the ******* sunset.

Her face is in my yearbook,
so serious, in the first row
of the literary club group picture.

I'm in the third row
looking stupidly away
from the camera,
missing the moment -
could that boy in the photo
call out over twenty years and say
"The fists of rain, the speckled deer,
the branching, shaded fog peeling
away as the dogs run in the morning -
these things are yours, yours, yours"?

My eye's choir
garbles the sway
swung from your sun's
dying orange angle.

Yes, Saturn's higher
on the belted tray
of stars, softly done:
we're entangled,

you and I.
If I'm a bird,
you're the wings,

though your thighs
eat all my words,
in their long dark strings.

Fleeing line cross-wave,
lateen sail's white-flash,
buckling up the race-wind:
caravel out on the blue-green,
making every speed-point
under the gray coast-cloud -

You,
     on your way to me.

I.

The washing moon
over evergreens
plucks needling rain:
unsleeping, you rise
& flip through a few pages
although your mind
anchors elsewhere.

II.

Driving home,
you see small birds
whipping into the afternoon
on the line to green,
although your mind
has turned inward
like the stone in a cherry.

Green bottle,
can you swallow
a whole childhood,
leave only a few drops
on this evening apron?

O sherry-strained Scotch,
blur the lines
of guilt and weight.
After that, what is left
to care about?

Just say it -
you know you should.
Say it quickly, while the night
scrapes an onyx crutch
toward still another oblivion.