I'd rather
chill in some place
and burn an L
with you,
than let my tongue
get live
in any other
larynx
that never knew your name,
I'd rather
read a bad book
in your name
than a good book
in someone else's,
I know
that I was looking
at a landform
and not a landmass,
a being
more
than a thing,
what I want to know,
is why we leave each other alone
when no one
is an island
and there are no boatless
harbors?

I'd rather capture
your laughs
as I cup my ears,
and your tears
in the stern
of my fears.

I'd rather be
a relic
and possibly
a fuel
rather than
a nautilus
with nothing in its shell
to give.

I've taken the boat out
and the oars
trip up on grass
as I paddle through the bay of the asylum
across lime oceans
contracting scurvy
from too much fertilizer
and not enough fruit.

Walking to the bodega,
I think about those sparrows
that run in the wind,
even when there's a cold blow
going,
and they work
like freaks
with sin on their mind.

Once I clear myself
of you,
I will write
like I used to,
I will be free
of the breakwaters
to read,
write,
and create
again, but love
or whatever-the-****-it-was,
has put a stop to
everything,
and I walk
to the bodega
with a head full of nothing;
no thermals,
no heat for me to ride, but I'm sure
I'll be okay,
I'm sure
you don't care.

I'd rather
be safe on some branch
lapping acid rain out
of a lead saucer,
than trying to ford
this river in the air
with nothing, not even a pair
of wet wings.

When I get
to the store,
I buy a pack of Marlboros
and ask
for all the lead
in the world.

He looks at me
with a screwface,
so I ask him again,
and he
says
"No loitering."

I was gonna fly home,
gonna try and test my
shoulder blades and see if maybe
I could make something happen.

But, I go to the garbage barge in the back
and sit, beside it, gravel scratching my *** with stingers,
as light scissors out of the sky;

little needles of sun in
the little oceans
in the little asphalt craters
making little,
if not any,
noise,
and I lean
drinking something slightly mean,
a forty and another in the bag,
because it usually helps in these situations.

I left my wings somewhere
and I cry there,
cry because I'm
stranded
in a place that I have never been,
with all the light in the world
and no place to put it.

I murked out,
at some point.

I would like to go to a place,
where people want to be,
the roads running
and bleeding notes
in the gutters,
a place
where people
want to remember they've been,
and fold their music
to be pushed across a rivulet
to someone across the street,
a place that could be called
a lime of abundance
or a lemon
of love,
someplace bitter
but sweetened
with just a dab
of sugar, a place
where I could become
a crystal
and dissolve
without pain,
I would like to move
out of the US
to a place
where people
learn how to talk
again
because they don't know how to talk
when they are at home,
I would like to live
in a place
where I could talk candidly
in a bar,
where I could yell
about the things
I want to yell about,
I could go somewhere
and stand in the street
and read poetry
and you would walk by,
I would be invisible,
I would be
unknowable.
I want the wheels  to come off,

I want to expect
to be blindsided by a bus
and wrap my arms
around broken headlights,
as I feel
love in her arms
in a place I have never been
and a creaming love that does not fit
into Jersey dresses
or bleached Jordans.

A woman's beauty
is in the flickering
essence of her
heart,
like the virtuosity
of De La Tour
her face is fading,
yes,
she is beautiful
but against the odds
I am enraptured
over what she told me
more than her lips,
hips,
and
finger tips.

I will forget her face
that's part of a controlled burn,
but I cannot
control how much
fire
will remain
as a result of her thoughts
and how they engulfed what was
hackingly breathing inside my ribs
when they burned me.

She learned
how to fight
from me,
put her gloves
up
on her bed;
red training Everlasts
the foam lasting
forever
even as other
fists made their way
to her heart,
the repeated blows
just gave her a lover's
brow,
a permanent bruise
against
intrusion,
She
learned how to move her
feet
from how I walked away
from her, learned
how to rip
through defenses
just by watching someone's feet,
how they move,
how they react,
how flat-footed they are
all those Converses stacked in a corner
like scalps,
that's why she's always looking
down, away from the eyes
where the most damage is done,
away from the chest
where a good jab can **** you,
to the feet,
always watching against the next move,
preparing herself
to dance away.

You remind me
of a wet New York,
a summer of oily
lights on the roads,
of concerts in the park
and the white, loving claustrophobia
in the sky,
you remind me
of standing at a window
fourteen floors up
watching cars on FDR
in the darkness,
hoping that one of them
is yours,
you remind me of
sirens
always, you remind me
of
a confidante
in an alleyway
stale with garbage
always,
you remind me
of subways
and dark knowledge the length and width
of a city
always, you remind me
of crossing a bridge
over grey water
and pewter boats.

It is hard for me to let go
of the city
even as it dampens
in the slate rain;
and the stretched clouds
are pulled down
over the highrises of love.

There is good,
there is hope,
there is a future
even when understanding
is far off,
and malice
is the epicenter
of the human earthquake,
there is good,
there is hope,
even when
you feel like no one loves you,
and you just want to lay down
in midnights forever,
to be a nightflower
in black and blue gardens
under the tiger-stripes of the moon,
there is good,
there is hope,
there are paintings
painted with the colors
of dreams sweeter
than dappled sunshine
and mercurial march mornings,
there is good,
there are times
when you see me
when you can
and that is enough
for me,
there is good,
there is time
left for hope,
there is a clock on the wall,
there is a salve
to put on ticking hands
to make them stop
and make sweet movements in the air
again,
to make spring as cerulean
as glaciers,
with all the ice water
in the world
left to drink, there is good,
there is hope.