My twin is no green-eyed monster,
rather he cuts through a crowd like Mr.Grant
and leaves me lurching in the aftermath,
tie askew; ginandtonic now mostlywater;
cocktail napkin ripping slowly from the
condensation, and me with eyes going
blinkblinkblink.

He has colossal strength,
carrying grudges like Atlas,
boxing up Hope like Pandora.

He can fight off sleep for days
and carries me along to exotic locales:
Waffle House at 3:30 in the morning.
Is she there? Was that her voice
in the background?

I know that voice better than my own.

"tell her her boyfriend called"
I can choke into the phone
but it's my other half laughing with the boys in the background

Consequences are meaningless.
He's got me here to clean up the mess.
He has given me some tape and glue.

High quality stuff
that does not do its job.

Right now everything is a
VERY BIG DEAL
and I am stretched thin like a wire
sizzling with potential energy going nowhere
meanwhile I wish to fall to the street below
and become
SOMETHING
for a brief few moments
until I am switched off and replaced
with a better model
and I can lie forgotten
perhaps absconded for some
AMBITIOUS PROJECT
that never gets done
and I can finally rest in the dark
beneath six feet of other forgotten dreams
while the world buzzes and whirs around me,
hard at the task of forgetting
while trying to be remembered.

We will go over that hill right there,
the one yearning for the sky like the earth took a breath and held it for a million years.
Then down in the valley, just to the left,
we will find a little path,
a dry artery through the lonely trees,
and soon we will burst forth into a little meadow, a perfect circle.
If we squint a little we can see the ghosts
of pagans cavorting around an angry fire and
perhaps we will wish to be wild, free, and dangerous too.
We can sit, if you'd like,
or we can measure the meadow's circumference with careful steps,
we can find the very center and stand terribly close,
or we can each choose a side and negotiate a truce.
Perhaps I will take your hand.
Perhaps we will share a kiss.
But we will always feel that aching distance between us
that even perfect meadows cannot fill.

As I remember it I sat alone as a stone
somewhere out near Pleiades
and on nights when I felt quite human
I could squint my eyes into the distance
and remember something akin to earth.
Klaxons blared and lurched me alive again
and my ship rumbled underneath me,
already leaning into the Event
like a dog on a leash just too short of his bone
and as I remember things,
and I often remember them differently,
the leathery hands of some goddess I loved
encircled my ship and cradled my heart,
then whispered, "I love you. I'm sorry.
it's time to die."
Then one finger twitched
the leash was cut
and we were off to the races, son.

When we passed the Horizon,
I always thought it would be blue,
the singularity of the pain
pressed white hot kisses down my spine
and I looked for the drip but we were way before that now
so I closed my eyes and let it all go
and gave up everything to those swinging hips
and dead, brown eyes

Out the other side I found myself
s t r e t c h e d
thinner than a rose
my feet were in Omega
when she kissed me on the nose

That is why we're here, sun,
where it all looks the same.
Are we the ones who differ
No one doubts that we're to blame

The war is over and there is a tail on the son
The war is over
but I am waiting
in pieces on the floor

Mistah Gates. He dead"

Time is an ouroboros and
the Earth a flat circle

Measure out your life
in insta pics

Let us go then, you and I,
through empty diamonds
and deserted play grounds.
Let us visit, if you will,
the battlefields ,
streets full of bodies
that decay in minutes.

In waiting rooms people come and go
and speak of tanks and Bushido
 
Eyes I dare not meet
Can see me with their headpiece
made of straw

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Forgotten, as we stare at our new ones.

Tir na Nog, land of my youth
withers now like bone from truth.
Hearth and home are cold as stone,
forsaken rivers dry as bone.
No longer will the lofty spires
be full of laughter, song, and fires
as emerald streets now choke with dust,
the blacksmith's hammer breaks from rust
and in a pub not far from town
a lonely warden's sorrows drown.
She sinks her shoulders to the fog
and kills the crush of thought with grog.

when we were last was all was well
adjunct a wall of stone we lay
on verdant grass my throat did sing
of wheeling stars
and evergreen.

when next my breath and fingers flew
to sword unsheathed at shadows long
like Venus stung you sank below,
like Sisyphus
i climbed anew.

You were late.
So late that I had given up on you
but when I first saw you extinguishing a smoke in the struggling grass
I knew it was you
and I called your name
and this was my first glimpse of you,
fumbling to hide your vices,
hair springing around your face
like a thousand little Slinkies
yearning to get free.

You were late.
So late that I had given up on you
on the 7th floor of a hospital,
my first hospital,
we sat outside and fumbled with our vices
and you told me it was over,
two kids ****** into the murky pond of
ADULT ISSUES,
neither one of us did our job very well
and all my fellow patients kept telling me how pretty you were that night.

You were late.
At 21 you were too late to save me
but I never gave up on you.
Forgiveness is an unfaithful mistress
and I look back and sigh,
remembering the ease with which I hated you.

You are late.
I am still waiting.
I am waiting.

This is a hieroglyph in the middle of the ocean,
a message to the center of space,
it is Stravinsky in a metal box;
a prayer in the grave.
It is not to be heard, read, or felt,
but is sent out into the darkness
like the wheezing breath from my last cigarette ,
the chill of the last river I altered with my step,
the forever in the space between our eyes,
and the time machine of you and I.
There is a snap of electricity that moves you from here to there
and there is our world in the hollow spaces of your brain.
You are the blood, you are the marrow,
you are in my depths and in my narrows.

There was a little boy who saw a tail on the sun,
wandered into the wrong back door
and stumbled out the front
with a pocket full of kisses,
and there was a girl who was far from home,
tiny hands and full of wishes.

Close your eyes.

Do not read this next part.
It's a secret I cannot share.

There is a picture that I look at often and it is of a ridge of mountains,
snow on top, jagged edges like a page ripped from a magazine
and I know now what I didn't know then
that after I snapped that shot everything would change,
that I would go home and become something I never could be again,
that I would discard gods like tissue
and drive my car as fast as it would go in the rain,
that I would share this picture on a tilting Saturday night
with a sigh and the subtle rustling of metal and cloth,
a susurration settling over us like a shroud,
and that I would surrender myself to the chaos,
lose everything within our delicious destruction
and spend the rest of my life wondering where all the pieces of me landed.

This is a riddle you are not meant to understand.
This is a Celtic Cross spread by a dead man's hand.

I am hanging underneath an iron bar,
little shoulders aching,
sweaty fingers scraping off ochre with each sad little swing.
You are leaving and I am wearing a grubby white shirt.
The one with the little train on it.

Your leaving is not like in the movies,
which is all I know of leaving,
and you are not looking back at me through the dusty rear window as your family pulls away.
There is no little hand waiving me goodbye.
Simply, one minute you are there
and the next you are gone
and I am all alone.

Your house stood vacant for a season or two
and I would sneak into your back yard,
our back yard,
and stare into the empty rooms.
The plate glass was cool against my forehead
but something inside of me smouldered.

The new owners did not have a collie
or a pesky little sister
and they certainly did not have you.

I am waiting there.

I am still waiting.

We will go over that hill right there,
the one yearning for the sky like the earth took a breath and held it for a million years.
Then down in the valley, just to the left,
we will find a little path,
a dry artery through the lonely trees,
and soon we will burst forth into a little meadow, a perfect circle.
If we squint a little we can see the ghosts
of pagans cavorting around an angry fire and
perhaps we will wish to be wild, free, and dangerous too.
We can sit, if you'd like,
or we can measure the meadow's circumference with careful steps,
we can find the very center and stand terribly close,
or we can each choose a side and negotiate a truce.
Perhaps I will take your hand.
Perhaps we will share a kiss.
Mostly we will stare in silence because of the unyielding distance between us
even perfect meadows cannot fill.