I was fifteen
in a birthday
room for Alan.
Lamps out,
air thick
with the flick
& sag of
a movie.
My slick hand
taken by the girl
on the floor.
White noise burst
in my mouth.
My heart
crawled
down the stairs.
The lamps
puffed on
and she slipped
my hand.
Each cone and
rod in her
green eyes
glistened,
adolescent.

I saw her again
at a house party
when I was
twenty-three.
Drunk on
Haitian ***,
carving out
a blood rhythm
under
a canopy
of memory.
Her lips shined
in memorial
to what teenagers
had been, once.

Later, I threw up
the *** into
the bushes
below the kitchen
window and I heard
her turn
off the faucet with
an indifferent laugh.

I was going through
this box I've had
since my father died
it's full of the things
he saved about me
my third grade report
card calling me social
but not much of a rule
follower or my dorm
room clean-out card
all those things but
what tore me up
were all these short
stories I wrote when
I was 17 or 18 and had
these dreams of being
the next Joyce I barely
even remember some
of them but what I do
remember is that dad
always wanted to write
a story together father
and son and kept giving
me ideas to start my half
of it and I never did
I never wrote a ******
word I might have sent
him an idea and then
never followed up and
now he's gone and what
I wouldn't give to just
write a few **** words
for him to show him
I took it seriously and
maybe give him just
that one more chance to
open up and tell me what
kinds of things rested
in the broadness of his mind.

I was thinking of you,
watching green oxide stone
resist the rain
on a broken Sunday
when the groins of trees
trembled in the breeze,
& the sky lacked
all confidence,
five days until
the metal snout
carried me off,
away from a dawn yard
of bread brick, and
towards the one-wing bridge
& your greenest wave.

I will write about it,
someday. Today,
though, my life
huddles under
a blue raincoat.
Someday I will
tell it all, really.
See, the problem
is that I have
given away
all my secrets,
but not to you.

Were they always a metaphor
for depression?

The green women
living always in the
ice-sluggish river,
waiting with thorn
teeth for those who
don't know better than
to approach their world?

Postpartum mothers who
pull the children back
into the quiet womb?

Every river seems
to have one:
Jenny Greenteeth,
Peg Powler,
Nelly Longarms.

Step out of the water, Jenny -
shake off the cold, cut your
hair, your nails. Toast some
cheese and bread, drink cider.
I won't ask you to smile,
or promise to save you,
but maybe just sitting
on the bench is enough
to keep your feet dry.

"Je vis assis, tel qu'un ange  aux mains d'un barbier" -Rimbaud
"I spend my life sitting, like an angel in the hands of a barber"

Here it is, another day.
This one is called Monday.

The sour yellow-white wax
smears bright as feathery snow

towards the westing.
"I spend my life sitting,

like an angel in the hands of a barber."
Clouds are old sailcloth,

gray hunches traded away
at voyage's end in exchange

for a handful of sallow moon.
I am missing a lot of necessary things.

I fill the gaps as I can, but, well...
I let my beard grow out, so that I look

as unwholesome as I feel.
Small birds chirp on branches

bare as flayed phalanges.
If love is man unfinished,

then so is death.
Brown hierarchies ride along

in the early holiday afternoon,
while brick squats off the road.

Here it is, another day.
This one is called Monday.

The following is an account of
expenses in connection
with the Underwood investigation.

Expense account item #1:
$24, cab fare to your office.
Case of Jane Underwood,

Seattle, not seen
the last eight days.
Insurance policy on

her: $10 million.
I took the case.
I cocked my hat

low over my eyes,
cigarette behind the ear.
Expense account item #2:

$322.74, airfare to Seattle.
I interviewed the family,
the friends, the husband -

they all had alibis -
& also the man
she was seeing on the sly.

Expense account item #3:
$33.08, two packs of cigarettes,
a pack of gum, and a beer

at the neighborhood bar
where I watched Jake Wilson -
the Other Man in the picture.

Expense account item #4:
$29.90, cab fare from the hospital
where Wilson just gave it up.

I found him folded under
a neon sign by a cheap hotel.
I didn't see where the shots came from.

Someone wants Underwood
the stay missing, very missing.
Expense account item #5:

$120, a new coat, the old one
has bullet holes. More close calls.
Digging around, I learn

Wilson was knee deep
in counterfeiting Franklins.
Crowbar to the basement door

of the house he was renting
under a different name,
I found the missing woman,

cuffed to a radiator, mostly fine.
She found out about the funny money,
threatened to go to the cops

unless Wilson cut her in.
She was over her head.
But then - so was I -

who shot Wilson?
Expense account item #6:
$75, marriage license, King County.

Jane Underwood and I are
running away together
with the bad hundreds.

Time to end one of these
stories the easy way.
Tired of Hartford,

tired of heart's noir,
consider me retired.
But then, holding her hand

driving to Los Angeles,
her purse falls open
& the gun that killed Wilson

falls into the footwell.
It was all a setup. It always is.
Her hand gets cold, tight,

real tight. The ride
is about to get... difficult.
If only she knew, if only she knew

how many times I'd seen this
twist, how many women,
how many guns, how many

Wilsons had fallen to the ground
under how many cheap
blinking blue broken neon signs.

We talk
late into
the street,
the trees
seem to
come loose
and drift
out into
the night sky.

In the farthest
distance,
galaxies
break apart
into strings
of stars.

You're in
Dublin,
lovely
in your step,
in your voice,
in the stocking
you rip
so idly.

I watch
people
stroll across
the broad
walk of
apricot
stones.

I watch
the dark
green sky
drop centuries
down the
Spanish steps.

I listen
as you
enchant
my phone
with sighs.

The world
is so small,
crossing
the bedposts
of the sun.

The world
is so large,
on the beach
of your
laughter.

Brown bottle's weeping
in the summer evening -
following the lawns to  
Kansas Avenue,

the night limps in
on starry crutch
over a heady glaze of traffic
riding the asphalt beam.

A woman walks a parrot
in the circle, and children
skip to avoid stepping
on cracks.
  
Thready breeze, brick slants
follow me back
to the thin javelin
of Gallatin Street.

My skin's
fever,
your gaze's
brook -

Join me,
even if
to reach me
you must use
the milky way
for stepping
stones.

Each mile is
conspiracy
against us.

Each hour
of division,
is poison that
I am forced
to drink
with you.

You, with
Rapunzel's
tresses,
you are in
poems that
have always
existed.

No matter
how much
I want you
to lay there
and let me
read to you
by the light
of comets,
you can't
hear me.

You are
too far -

My skin's
sun,
your gaze's
moon.

We were just telephones
full of young ***,
sharp breath and sticky,
talking into sleep...

I'd dial into your machine,
it was your mom singing
"Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin,
you were so embarrassed

(with that button nose
you hated so much),
but it was always OK, Kelly.
We met just the once, at Alan's party,

for his basement Exorcist
& you clutched my hand in the dark.
When you're 15, that kind of thing
takes on certain meanings.

When you broke us up
I sobbed in my bedroom,
pleading to Richard Pryor
who I had pasted to the ceiling.

I lost track of you
until you married my blond
summer steakhouse boss:
everyone said you weren't happy.

Now you are a minus sign,
a gauze-ghost, an atom-gap,
a redheaded dull-bladed heartache
who I thought I loved, once

(in my teenage way, I did).
I buttoned my shirt wrong
while remembering you,
I tasted you in a glass of rye.

There is a freeze coming.
Wear a scarf, a good jacket:
the rain is coffin lacquer gloss
as it shines and skitters into ice.

In the attic
with sister
old computer.

Insert disc 1 of 9,
King's Quest IV:
The Perils of Rosella,

argue about
who types,
where next,

do we call
the hintline,
5 a minute.

Rosella walks
screen to screen
in red dress.

We direct her
to act and
to die.

Reload
Rosella,
start again.

It took
all winter
to complete.

I remember
everything,
the whale and

the bridle,
the ball and
the hen.

In memory's
treasury
this is among

the most dear:
walnut table,
voltage hum,

sister yelling
watch out
watch out.

Your old card,
"You're My Person"
creases in my hand.

The note is so sweet
it ruins me; my nose
spots blood, I cry so hard.

Even if I put it down
& only touch it
with my mind

it wrecks the afternoon,
a hammer-handle
between the eyes.  

Yet I can't even file it away,
still less remove the pastel
from the black chess mantel.

It's part of me,
stowed deep in the heart,
like a blade the doctors
are afraid to remove.

I also sent cards,
filled with adoring scrawl,
Turkish slices,
raw pianissimos of love.  

I wonder if they split you, too.
I don't know what we are,
only how I feel -

you are the root
of gladness.
My hair still burns

when I think of you.
I am committed to the dark
chancels of your thoughts.

I may be shackled to the white blot
of Washington, but the blood
specking whorl and loop
erupts from Dublin.

Consider this, then,
another card,
sent to you across
cerulean cavity

all the way to your
necklace of river.  
You're my person.

As always, my honey,
I close with
kisses and hugs,

knots and crosses:
"xoxoxo"

My glass
is all ice and
cheap *****.

My eye drowns
with envy in
your clean kõlsch.

Neither of us
speak a word
about marriage.

The sad old dracula
totters down Lamont,
smells like brandy.

White hair puffed
with talcum or flour,
last year's grease
paint blood running
mouth to chin, collar
turned out high,
swaying on heavy
feet among the happy
terror of children.

He sits on the curb,
falls asleep.

Who knows what
escape he sells
to himself, what
weight this dissolves?

A toddler leaves a fistful
of candy at his feet,
for him to enjoy when
the sun is thrown out
onto the street.

Drinking four hours now
in a pool hall, Larkin folded
behind me as a I draw
back the cue. Distressed,
lines snap the stroke:
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Not tonight: clouds crawl
on sick bellies to an Alka-Seltzer moon.

But drink gone dead, without showing how
to meet tomorrow – is molded
perfectly to this blind drunk, thawing
beneath breezy transom, getting dressed
for a ride home after going for broke,
drinking anesthesia and losing all finesse
early in the binge, kindly corralled
by patient friends deaf to last call's croon.

Larkspur rose with azure head
in that blondish vacancy
by the metro line:
you were a summer.

But now those withered faces
are mute, closed for business,
peacock's burst plumes:
you are a winter.

Lay a shadow on me -
we sleep overlapped
with the night-bells,
the thieves in the pines,
the crescent wine,
mothers-of-pearl.

Lay a shadow on me -
your sun's waist
rises while my dreams
are still marching
across my forehead.

It's another late night
when rain strokes the yard

into gore-blue slate strakes.
Beyond the almond-thin window

a car hurtles into a red away
at the same time

as your face pushes
through the plum-colored

angelfish orchids
right to my blanket eye

as I wake from a dream
about snow in Dublin.

A moon bathes in Judas rain,
in dense yellow shadow;

although I am so alone -
I have never been so alone -

I feel your presence
in this strange convergence

of a flower's face, and
the memory of motherless snow.

Long morning
chopped with sleep
drifts into a long
afternoon, also
chopped with sleep.
Evening brings
similar promises.

Some Sundays
take you in the
teeth and never
let you go.

A day for a lonely
cigarette in the yard,
for looking into the
mirror and reassessing,
for watching the trees
waving each to each.

Not much else now
but to take the little
pills and wait
for tomorrow.

Rare girl,
so full of life,
watch how
three cartwheels
of years pursue
you, for you
are born from
the shavings of
the sun's golden
flanks, from
crystal splinters
of full moon,
from dreaming
flakes of rain -
little pieces of
every day that
went missing
over three years,
sliding away
to assemble you,
on that
perfect day.

Those three years
will always lie
to you, tell you
your birthday is gone
when they have
bundled it away.

But they know
that every
fourth year
you will
come for it,
& you will
open the day
like a package,
& with a spoon
you will eat the
honeycomb of sun
that is your birthright,
the sweet milk of moon,
on dishes of rain.

You are so open
to the world
because you are
so much of it.

All things
are equal
in length
& distance
from you -
the shyness
of tea steeping,
breezes
drawn off
Maryland's
green-armed
mountain,
night's gin
spill of
light on
the pane -
& don't forget
that I too
am in your
sphere,
more than
shadow,
less than
touch.

Let me warn you,
this poem says
                           nothing.

A half-inch of snow
fell in the yard?
I'm compelled
to record it here
for reasons unknown
even to myself.

The clouds are dark
and frothing?
That's nothing new.

What do rough
cumulus lips
mouth in the
upper distance?
Look up, peer
as snow-hills
melt into self-loathing.

By the way,
this poem merely
turned skyward,
it still says
                   nothing.

Please, please, please
come down on our side.
I'll ditch this clovering snow,
& go anywhere with you.
Either way, our parade
will keep moving
down Main St.
I'm dying to tell you this,
but you're so far from me,
slipped into the black squares
of distance you requested.
I packed your things because
I couldn't take the museum:
your cherry lover's dress,
your little coffee mugs,
your Aleppo pepper.
Then I unpacked the pepper.
I love you without condition,
little tiramisu.
But I can't make you feel
the same way
without your help.  
Please come down
on our side, honey.
In our ship, right now
you are the captain
with the wheel in your hand.
I am the lookout -
I think I see land,
but there might be rocks.

Dear E--,

Sewing gold,
we walked
in the vacant
invisibilities.

In a hush-throated hall
we saw a Last Supper
of acrylic blocks,
breaks of the past.

Wooden masks
deviled the olive wall,
& we found tiles that
turned out our hands.

None of this sustained
you when the sun dropped
beams like pick-up-sticks,
aces of heat.

It didn't sustain you
when my friends
split like copper stills
across the breaded table.

The grand oil lamp
& the sea chant
became ash daubs
of noose memory

when I returned
to your dark room.
I'm sorry for every
thing I couldn't repair.

Every whorl
& loop in my hands
held you tight
as boas.

By the time I felt
your breath settle
into the delta of sleep
things had half-healed.

Still, I trembled
with sharp dreams.
In the morning,
I was yours again -

as I always was.
This is my apology.
Yours,
Evan

To E--,

Sleep flocks east,
leaving sheets clapped,
& yanking back
my unruly dream.
Frost is handsome
in the starry clover,
& an unsteady sun
seems still drunk,
flushed about the cheek,
after columns of Saturday.
I can feel the chill
across the glass
when holly stripes
with stringent wind -
I miss you.
You trouble my mornings
with your absence.
Sometimes when thoughts
are mottled by drowse,
I surprise myself
making coffee for two.
My walls rhyme
with your drawings.
I must wait until
your half of the bed
aligns heady bells again
on a snow-drum Sunday.
I remain,
your lamp-eyed lover,
Yours,
Evan

Dearest E--,

"For she had eyes
and chose me"

I send
you a
small
lyric.

You
have
always
deserved
it.

“But I will wear
my heart upon my sleeve”

I take
this
play
& fit it
to my
need
this
Sunday,

my heart
a cuff,
shaking
with
morning,
affixed
with
a storm.

“I would not put a thief
in my mouth
to steal my brains.”

Your
voice
plays
among
my teeth,
& soon
my
thoughts
are your
rings,
Lorca's
green.

“Men should be
what they seem.”

"Our bodies are our gardens
to the which our wills are gardeners.”

My past,
with all
of its
attempts,
is as
naked
to you
as this
vein
that flees
my wrist.

In the
glass
you can
see me
whenever
you
choose,
even
though
my hair
waves
the
wrong
way
& my
olive
skin
dawns
with
ardor.

"To you I am bound
for life and education"

You
have the
scratch-map
to adventure -
you
journeyed
deep -
whereas
I spent
a life
burning,
'a trail
for the
devil to
erase.'

You are
a beam
let into
the rooms
of night.

I am
bound
like a
sailor
to the
mast.  

"Each second
stood heir
to the first"

Time
sips
from
each
glass,
moving
down
the line.

I miss
you,

Ever Yours,
Evan

Dear A------,

I remember you at my sister's wedding,
you had hands of wild river,

& clouded beach was in your hair -
I was halfway through a sober year

sitting in a rattan bastille chair
watching the sea fashions,

my ear full of jailbreak children -
but I was thinking of night shapes,

things transformed by the dark -
I thought of your recipe: lost keys,

waning crescents, streetlamp breezes -
how strange and free I felt right then,

evening's cousin dressed to the nines
under trees bent to ferocious shade.

Then years passed: another marriage
disappeared into ribcage landslides

& mind riots, jobs were just smoke,
then it was Halloween and I was 44

& I was in New Orleans.
I wondered if you claimed it

the way I once claimed DC -
ambushed by a lost heart

that crept up into me in the suburbs
until only the city crux felt safe,

surrounded by new people
who might be doctors or hangmen.

I missed you that Halloween night,
though I ate in the corner

of your restaurant before I was blinded
by the rain bustle and whisked back

into a hotel window. I missed you also
the next night on Frenchman Street,

& in Storyville and Tremé where I wandered
throughout the runny yolk mornings -

who's to know if you'd even recognize me,
they've been hard years since Ocean City;

until I see you next I'll leave this letter
like a sip of liquor kept in promise

of stories shared in a plank-barred dive
on Toulouse or Tchoupitoulas Street.

Yours, Evan

To E--,

The orange sky
at 9 pm
is thrown over
the streetlamps,
bursting the
starry seams.

It's like you're
here, sometimes,
on this couch
the color of
burnt grass,
looking back
past the gauze
into the
hinging face
of night.

In truth,
you're sleeping
at the crux
of two
continents,
in an
eight-hour wash.

Every night
violent dreams
find me out
& unsew me
a little bit.

But soon
my wing of sleep
will be clean again,
because you will
be returned to me.
The orange sky
at 9 pm will
stop revolting,
and the night
will again be
the sweetest
of burdens.

Always Yours,
E---

H----,
You leave for the broad south
in four days, to rasp a new curl

from old timber. Your destiny
is obliged to subdivide again,

fresh and wild. In the basement
of your goodbye I was filled

with a familiar senescence:
old wreaths, nerve-headed,

are hammered to inner doors
where I hide atomic thoughts

and hot-heart steam valves;
muffled click-clacks ricochet

in a containing pink sarcophagus.
How appropriate that I left

in the melting middle of the rain,
the road seething and spitting,

puddled rugs of mercury skating
across Saturday's lap.

H----, this life is strange and brief
& your escape to far sun country

is high adventure; but I lament
your absence, all the same.
Yours, Evan

Dear H-----,

Everything then
is now, too,

memory
is plural.

In law school
I mentored you

& let you ******
me after I broke

up with the art
deco girl who

kept turning the
blade in my side as

if it were a key.  
It was a scandal -

I felt my name
crawling lip to lip,

caught library looks,
but didn't care.

Your sister taught me
the moon game

at your kitchen table
& then spread my blood

with her song.
Do you remember it?

When I drank
my acetylene pain,

you were so quick
to forgive. It left

an impression.
We came home late,

laughing so hard
we were *******,  

with the moon
tangled in the ivy.

But I was still hanging
from the blade of

the art deco girl,
& it wasn't fair to you,

dying like that.
And then when

my grandmother
died, I needed you

but it was too much
& you fled. It was the end.

You moved, and married.
I let the art deco girl

saw me apart
a few more times.

But I never forgot
how alive we were,

or the strange sound
of the lullaby I wrote you.

Dear J----,

How many suns died,
out in the black margins
& burning headrooms
since we last shared
any words of importance?
I look out tonight from the roof
towards the endless upper branch
& swear a few have blinked away.

You strolled in so casually
from my dream, as if from the wood
or park, and common strokes
moved in the air between us.
Your words fork across
all your grassy miles,
as you tell me about the fox-scream;
I can almost see the starlings
hash across miniature cubes of lawn.

I live in silver -
the cars that flicker right to left,
the metro's metallic hide,
the strange inflorescent cloud
that garottes the coinish moon.
I'll lend it you on afternoons
when the rain deposits itself
in quiet blue discs across the city.

Go now, and know
that I am always grateful
for another friend, especially
when they understand
how hard a heart heaves
across all the bent years.

Yours,
Evan

K----,

You are fresh milk
& I am lemon pulp.

My acid smile pools
on my face, pink curdled shadow

aimed at your corner.
You are so young:

you mock the silver sway
that drips down my cheeks.

You are draped in yourself,
but I don't really mind,

because you're clever. Inside you
I think there's something tender;

but it's not for me to uncover.
I'll sit in the angle,

the beer cranny, and glance
your way with eyes full of sugar.

The night dies waltzing
on yellow lemon heels;

the day is born in a flicker
of snide cream cloud.

"Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life."
-Gregory Corso, "Marriage"


To Whom It May Concern:

Three years ago I was supposed to marry
for a third time, but disease came
& courts closed and the house of cards
began shaking: aces are thin.

Two years ago it ended savagely
as I was packing my things for Dublin,
looking up how to get the cat on the plane,
when she texted: scalpels are thin, too.

I began drinking. Not like the books say -
the lonely poet sipping sherry in a turret,
in a black cape with a quill in hand -
no, ugly cups of scotch at eight in the morning.

The whisky brought my grandfather's body
from the past and forced it onto me -
I stopped recognizing myself
in the poisoned mirror. I sold the house.

I bought a new place, in an artist's neighborhood,
I went for long walks, I purged some bad blood.
But the heart ran down like a forgotten watch.
I felt tarnished. I felt like I died years ago.

Now whenever a poem slips out of me,
I am dismayed. The world around me
reflects endlessly a cascading loneliness,
a disappointment, an uncertainty,

& it's all I can talk about because looking in,
breaking the lacre, is unbearable most of the time.
Clouds sing and perish in the new night;
when day comes, it's sodden, sealed, sunless.

I don't know where else to go with this letter,
so I will scrawl my fingers across the clatter
& go lay down. The street is spotted:
It's starting to rain.

v/r, E-

Andrei,

I was a child
when I read
a piece of paper
& you died.

You were a telegram
falling from the air,
a moth, a stray dog,
a liner note passing
through my hands.

I pressed play
& Chopin unwound
like a serpent,
the mood shifting
like the rainbow
that feeds on oil's skin.

I went out
& found more.
Rachmaninov attacked,
a chess game
where the pieces moved
ten at a time.

& the Prokofiev,
followed me
around the house.

I was a child
when I saved you
with my ears.
Let me save you again.

Come, revenge
yourself a little while
in my old records.

Dear Z----,

Once, maybe, I was an Orpheus -

one of millions (there are still millions),
calling someone back from an underworld -

once, maybe, I had candles for fingers,
stars leaking from my teeth,
eyes that broke barred doors in twain.

But not now. You were so shy
at the bar's short shoal
giving me rain-in-Montreal smiles,
hinting at a history of disappointment.

Sometimes, it all changes in a single night -
but the magic failed us both.
I will always wonder.

So I am sorry: my hands, my eyes...
my starry mouth a wide sorry-slash.

I have to go. -E

E--,

I packed your things today,
preparing for my new place:

donated all the old yoga clothes
ticked with high-tide sweat-marks -

kept the Turkish coffee set,
with its flattish copper faces -

still unsure about the books
that wait in the azure evening,

pages fluttering in a rain-wrest
that waves in with thick stacks of heat.

When we spoke last night,
it was like you were recalled from the dead:

The familiarity of your face and voice
filled this pink brain with ancient urges

that were almost immediately canceled
by the deep pauses of hairless hearts.

You are not really here,
although I sense you in everything.

The yellow Dulles gate is open to you -
if you choose to take it -

but you won't choose.
I am a forgotten drawing,

penned long ago
in a sketchbook left behind.

E--, you are a shadow,
standing in for a body

that still masters me
in all my essential motions.

I can't escape you,
& miss every minute

that our breath called common.
This sky is just a pale sapphire sheet

you saw hours ago. But now,
as you turn in for the night.

I send you my best.
Always, forever yours,

Dreaming of Dublin,
Evan

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.

O Irish
girl, here
is a dream
of old
Furies
adrift in
the young
night,

arrogant
and
swift
as the
swans
that swim
the canal
out your
window.

A bruisy trumpet of cloud spills
upward from tower-top neck,

faceless grey guyser
pluming from brick bottle.

No wishes are granted today:
instead, the sponge-honey skulls

of dithering sidewalk elms
dream their green dreams over us

as the sun falters for a moment,
scattered through the lawn.

Come slip like shade
into my outstretched hand,

walk with me in an afternoon
somewhere between rain and fever.

I'm inclined
on green couch -
I work towards
my best face,
my wrist angle
marries the *****-light
to the pane-shadow.
You, so darkly pretty,
totally oblivious
to the agonies
of little cameras.
We talk too few minutes,
say goodbye too soon,
fumble with the chemistries
that still crackle between us,
despite your wall and wine.
Little cameras reveal me
the wrong way, but
they bring you to me
across the thousands.
I'm redeemed
when my heart
pushes for you,
sweet glass.

O little cloud,
where have you gone?
You sink to wisp or worse.
Your grayness turns bone-white,
then a cancerous blue
until you are nothing -
no, you are nothing now.
Your grave is the air
that I breathe.

I sharply decline with you;
you, up in your vault,
waiting for the densities
that will crease you into rain,
I in my mug-clutter,
my liquor-ploughed
library of ills,
try to cope,
come to grips.

Little cloud,
you died a long time ago.
You were reborn,
& died again. You've died
so many wet deaths.
I understand.
This is no world
to live in more
than a day or two.

The heater lopes
behind me, so
I don't hear you
rugging your way
up the stairs
with your gun.

When you point
it towards me,
the lights switched
on yesterday.

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.

Apple trees
bow silently,
& meadows
burn evening
green. You
strolled out
of a dream
into my life.
Paintings wait
for your eye.
Bricks wait
for your feet.
The city desires
what I desire -
that you come,
& live with me.
The swansies
have had you
long enough -
let me have my
turn. I've placed
a bookmark in
my life, turned
down the corner
of the page.
I walk the same
circles, past the
same apple trees,
the same meadows,
but I'm only
half in it.

Laces of rain
sleep in the air
as our speech
erodes into slopes
of silence.
My phone
doesn't ring.
Your ghost
walks the wood
floors tonight.
I watch from
the frost light
of the fridge
as you vanish.
Nothing's left now
but to close the door,
sew the dark in
around me,
& listen to the
last movements
of the rain.

Lulled on whisky,
listening to the rain alone -
I'm tired of living
3000 miles from your
bread and salt,
which is to say
I believe in us,
that there are ways
to get this done,
& move the sea step,
clean our slate.
When you smile again,
please remember me.
I am the one waiting
on your smallest fraction,
thinking of you...
it feels like I am always
thinking of you.

You know me
almost accidentally.
But when the night blows out
& the little secret garden
is filled with small rain,
it's your eyes I want
looking for me.

The last shadow will close my eyes
     and take the white day from me,
and unbind my soul from lies and flattery
     so that it can find its way;

but my soul won't leave its memory
     of love there on the shore where it burned:
the flame that swims cold waters
     and has no respect for the severest laws.

My soul, that a god made a prison for,
my veins, that have braided fire,
my marrow, which scorched in glory,

will leave this body but not this desire;
they will be ash, but that ash will feel.
They will be dust, but that dust will love.

The new stars
keep roving
& the roads rill out
down the hills -
I am so lucky
that you smiled
at my wayward
life, let me
open your grace
with a strum
of my fingers.
I loved you first,
and best - just ask
the wild nets
of new stars -
they'll tell you
everything.