My buddy Todd set us up.
Her name, I knew her name:
Isabel Fienne.
I met her outside of Byron's,
drinking a 40 out of a brown bag.
She wore black, black spaghetti strap,
black Memphis skirt, black stockings.
I told her I liked the color of her eyes.
She said her dad just died.
And asked me, "What was your name again?"
I asked her, "How about a little of that drink?"
We spent the night throwing rocks at passing cars,
dodging police, and talking about how
we liked the anonymity of night.

We woke up in an alley.

I whispered the word stockings.
She bit my lip.
We get married the first of June.

I don't care that you left, you know.
All you took was my happiness.


F.Z.**N

Let me tell you again about the dream I have where I wake up in a bed across the Atlantic.

The dream where you are settled on my skin, still asleep.

You are all lips and freckles.

In this dream you speak before you wake and you tell me, “hold my hand, hold my hand,” and your voice to me is like god ****** gospel.

When they open, your eyes are not your eyes—they are more like the only navigable sea I’ve ever known, and you’re looking not at me, but past me.

The dream where the air around us thickens and I reach out a fingertip, but when I touch you I go right through you.

Our skins ripple and move in waves as we fade into shades of cerulean that soak into the sheets, disappearing like bathwater.

The crows scatter, straw rips through my shirt.
With just one act of violence you can see into my heart, it's
Dog-eared. Life is wire and wood. Old cords, a crucifix.

Is this vigil so lonely?

My days maybe short but they are blessed by sunshine
and starlight. I stand guard over the lunar fields,
of an eternal summer. The cracked earth is yellow,
un-ravaged by sleet and cold.

I may live here stuffed, but I can watch the clambering roots
heave from the soil like shipwrecked men rescued.
I can watch their desperate wells form from wicker earth
and gasp with water, sloshing dirt and clay to a molten relief.

I may stand stock and pelted by time
but I can watch the field mouse nest,
Such quivering babies, curled and blind emerge
and embark on the bravest of lives.

But even so, 
despite what i can see, 
I once got caught in phantom flight,
and forgot how still I was.
Because I was the crows,
lifted,
though my feet were still
just wood
nailed to the dirt.  

When I was toppled and the harvest was done,
I looked up and the moon was
grieving.

thinking only of work
- eating my own business
minding my food

and manners

people small talking too
loudly with mouths full

- best get back and busy

- all this talk of ebola
isis and clowns with machetes -

slender man and little girls
- kidnapped girls forgotten

collateral damage
- somewhere else
someone else's -

hard to concentrate
on  important things
like metrics and data calls -

site density- history
- work things and holidays -
you know

i should buy pumpkins
on the way home today

- halloween is coming soon.

r ~ 10/15/14

You think that intelligence
is measured by words
by sentences
by essays
but no combination of letters you put together will be enough
to erase your ignorance.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

To these whom death again did wed
This grave ’s the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
‘Twixt soul and body a divorce,
It could not sever man and wife,
Because they both lived but one life.
Peace, good reader, do not weep;
Peace, the lovers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded lie
In the last knot that love could tie.
Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till the stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into a light
Whose day shall never die in night.