I found your letter today, and I went to the woods to read it.
Autumn robbed me of solitude in the tree-cover,
The wind eventually would chase me from the fire-pit.
That broke, then the snow fell accordingly, seasonally.
The solitude returned in the white and cold,
chased everyone else away, to drink and dance in their homes.
I bought my first overcoat before I caught my flight back,
a woolen grey to hide dirt I’d sit on to hide the tag.
In it the inner, right-breast pocket, I held you’re letter.
I remember its first reading in my room, on the coffee table,
taping the scissored quotes from the envelope to my mirror.
I have yet to do anything out of fear. That, I recall I laughed at.

You’d be the reason I move back west,
you’d be the reason I go backwoods,
go suspend myself between roadways.
Albeit, though, despite & regardless,
was my thrill for fear made me wanna talk,
***** the desk drawer for my metal box,
savage my skin on the lonely walk.
If fear is as atomical as you say,
a lie on the tongue of every cell,
then, I could, if you’ll say, meet
every mote as it falls—
put my hand out to see
my first snowflakes.
they are not like this,
they are not like this at all,
so crystalline, back west.

Was fear that hid me this summer from you—
true, I used to fear the way you’d kiss me.
On the dock of the lake drinking wine, I told
that I was terrified then, then retracted,
said I was discomforted by myself.
Back then, way back when, ha,
feelings came thence beyond me
like the King of Pointland dethroned—
“What It thinks, that It utters;
and what It utters, that It hears…”—
myself was suddenly not mine,
I moved unprovoked and unprovoking,
finding myself in my bed
then on the porch smoking,
later then, sitting in your café,
later still, giving you my poetry,
but then, the levees break
and I wake in bed alone and
you’re on the floor in a heap
or, worse, gone soundlessly.
And here I find myself full-suited
in the mess of snow storm,
your letter in hand.

Trip tip-toe step walk into snow; a depth unknown;
trying to light the dark spirit eagle cigarette.
I find a tent in the wilderness and pitch it.
I spend two hours in there, wet, watching snow
build up until the roof gently pushes me out.
I still don’t know if I can read it.
It is only a rereading, but it’s weighty, regardless.
I emerge from the woods to the hill overlooking my life,
embanked by a line of pine. I stop here, relight myself.
The ash blends with the snowflakes
and the snowflakes melt when they touch the paper.
Have you loved? God, it’s an assurance I want.
Really, though, could I doubt it? if it is
only my love that I deem insufficient
to recquit the typed affection before me.
I kneel and read further.

To my surprise a golden-furred dog ran up to me.
He licked me, he smelled your letter, he smiled
and asked me to pet him and to not despair.
Leave it to an animal, beast in the snow
to so recognize, too, significance.
“How do I feel?” The beast frowned,
nothing hurts more than being asked
what you mean.
I got up and left when the owner’s whistle
called him away from me.

Walking back I found that I was missing a glove.
I looked behind me and I saw –against, -down the hill
the left-hand black-leathered eyelash in my tracks.
It was the same hand that you dropped from the dock
into the water this Christmas which I fished out and
fought off your apologies with. How I loved you then.

Then I must re-emerge onto the surrounding fields
and am hit with the wind that I hid from so well
in tree-cover. Then I must grapple with the life
I only half-cherish. Must think in sentences
and hyphenated-words—and dashes! ****** them.
Then, then, then! What happens next! eh?
In the steam tunnels with Carter, smoking, I said,
“I am ruled by fear. Even now I’m palpitant.”
I wrote, in the movie theater, whiskey in the soda cup,
“I am addicted fear, or so I have surmised.”
Hush, hush, hush!

If I fear I cannot love, I know that much.
If I love, as I believe I do, then I am only in denial.
True, small enough to see pure perfection, molecular.
Like the snowflakes back home which, too, are crystalline.
But it’s not visible to the naked eye, thus inconceivable,
given you’ll probably forget it. So it is dead to me.
No, God's not dead he's just not that kind of guy.
Brr, the decisive breeze. Well, then.

I miss seeing you smile.
To me it seemed that you laughed and kissed me for everything, but it was probably a mistaken impression, a
result of shock!
wonder!

Could you imagine my surprise,
how it could be unexpected?
How often is the soul’s desire met?
I can recall not ever, ne’er, near naught
save in amniotic baptism, had every
object subject—every ancient tissue
attended by an enzyme—every ray of
sun snuck between the blouse’s buttons,
around my mother’s *******, and
divined upon me was let there been.
I cut myself following consciousness
with my longest fingernail, did laugh
too convulsed, tickled by light did induce my birth;
I cried (they’ll confirm this), I
wept to rob my mother herself, so it seemed,
inhaled the endless time and limitless space.
You can imagine my surprise then
with your covered mouth at my joke.

To me it seemed as if I had body again, hadn’t had a hand to grasp, hadn’t a hand with to grasp; then,
like had putty-gilded muscles earthed
unearthed, did.

Have you ever seen creation?—
well, yes, of course, it did not except you.
As close to ex nihilo as your patience can manage
you would have seen the time and space
repel each other in a nail’s length
of chaos, Fiat Vita, about which there’s little to be said.
My patience breaks in breath, Fiat Lux: when
time and space colors the light and refracts
the matrix and gives fire to my soul for a body.
Rilke writes, “Every Angel is terror,” which we
love, “because it calmly disdains to destroy us.”
I know! I know! I bite my nails penitent still.
And my patience does extend yet further, still within;
before my birth following it:

Look! I can open you this door,
give you that,
carry you thus far,
lead you here,
can reach your smiling mouth
with a terrorized will to kiss withal!
I can endure as the “arrow endures the bow”;
as all matter collapses upon itself in effort to grasp itself,
so it does to grasp all itself in one grand handful;
as atrophy takes me from you as quickly as I give you it,
I am surprised to find that I have retained all of you;
not expecting that you might have hid me, too, where
I would overlook, where only you could go, where
the light silhouettes, for me can just stop breathing.
I can see without patience—as much as light allows
and just as long.

You have a poem;
Spring brings you poem.
I think Anthony must be your court's poet;
a serf turned grateful for his god-gave muse.
Genuflect he's to this Fürstin,
trip he does, too, over himself
getting you water
both up and down the stairs;
when presenting his poetry,
rebuts extended portension,
yes, pausing liking um-ing, tsk;
and all so when reaching for his dagger
to cut our darkness away,
does seem dance with shadows
like fire was a pomethean bane.
Still he gets it from his sheath,
brings it to her bloodless yet
dulled from the escaped swings
of misaimed blows into shrubs.

Wants me to call him Reichsritter.
I’d indulge him but he’d still
have to synthesize faith from
some avian metabolism,
(it’s known that poets’ health’s all
flat feet, weak livers, shallow lungs,
and consumptive coughs);
or, better yet, find knighthood
in the books read for your sake;
nay, I too must keep honest to you.
So does he, you know? thinks
sincerely that there’s the stuff of art
passed to him when he entertains you;
doesn’t think himself the lordship you insist,
thinks he’s groped and somehow scalded
himself upon the empyrean fire,
and bows recedes away feeling just
a bit impious.

That’s it though! :
You’re a young seraphim took earthly shape,
faring the angelic order’s routine errand
to forget absolute, embrace listless hate,
then forget it again.

Well, isn’t this where Anthony missteps?
cries wolf, burns midnight oil,
clutches his stomach in pain.
The ‘seraphim’ draft is just a wish
for your eternal life, please believe.
Every comet and season makes him
just as mouthful and excited.
A heart of love and head of art, tsk.
We can’t judge the heart
and the head
together can we?
Regardless,
a court poet essentially a jester,
pinned his poem
to my chest.
So, meine Fürstin,
you have a poem,
Spring has brought you a poem.

[February the twenty-seventh]
My hair is unwashed and here is blood in my spit.
There is *** on my shirt, requires care to notice.
I have a headache and took two chewable aspirin.
My hand on my cock!
Five, say, ten cumshot salute!
Ready, Aim, Shoot!
I played with a toothpick, pushed into my gums
whenever the professor looked quizzical.
I pick my nose whenever I'm sitting,
smeared where -I can, -it sticks.
I can feel bits of mud, gravel on scalp
between hairs. Been digging, you see.
Sand in the bed, too. Gets in on the feet.
Feels like ants. I walk in from the site.
I feel armless, a little regretful I started
writing this.

-Took vitamins
-Did reading
-Call parents
-Get sleep

When Carter woke up I hadn't even closed my eyes yet,
had'm locked dead on the grain woman on my screen,
hand beneath the blanket--But oh, how the sun came in.
Carter couldn't move at all. He was sitting on that one.
There.
I knew I was going to die that day, sometime,
did when I opened the shade and Rachmaninoff's
op. 14, №6 You Are Loved By All played. I didn't, now,
but I might have a kidney stone.

I heard the neighbor-lady through the wall, she said,
"... yes, mhm ... you don't have to ask me questions ...."
Getting hot, perspiring from the shirt, I hate
the itchiness and lifted up my shirt, There!
" ... I have to go ... I'll leave the door unlocked ...."
Then heard a shuffle, sheets and door hinges,
then maybe her step down the hallway.
An unlatched! apartment--I've coveted less--
this and all the pomp, pills, and condoms I've stole,
oh I was up already, zipped myself away,
making the way between diaries and ***** plates,
oh already up opening my door--you guessed?

The hallway was empty; I went right
and door 54, was it this? I put my weight
to it, fogged the eyehole with my breath.
Hand to the **** I turned and it opened.
Augh! The managers who've stopped me,
once I was even tackled by a security guard,
was handcuffed, was once called "heartless"--
if only every door opened like this.

I was shirtless still, in fact, my hand strayed
was raised to my breast and I kneaded
the skin and tugged the hair: I entered.
It was dark and I feared the honesty of light.
I had a step to the next and her kitchen
came upon me, I saw the shadows of her home.
I wandered further as if walking an antiverse;
someone else the same template.
I wanted to find where I lived in her home,
where I sat and heard her often call,
where I imagined she curled phone cords
or refused to snore now matter how hard
I pressed my ears to the wall.
This is it? This is her bedroom,
adjunct to mine, a wall to separate--
she sleeps here.
I've got breathlessness and my hand is groping.
Does she have a closet or dresser? I will see.
She calls a boy by name, is he coming?
When is he? Can I hide here, see him?
oh soon. I'll know too soon, too.

I open the door. And she is staring back.
Her hand against the wall, the spot,
where I rock my body awake from
nightmares. To reach through the
plaster and steal the socks. It was a,
a, a great shame to be so looked upon
so, an inanimate gaze like a mirror's
that maybe can't see me, dunno.
I want to move further, can't.
Can't say anything either.

[light.]

—And then I realize I’ve been breathing in through a cigarette.
Like again before, the violence of reality, its press of revelation.
Rush to write before it fades.

[drag.]

My Muscles could be putty (non anent my lungs
to soot); another year of breath and fight past,
another year to revisit me, its Tocks, it’s to
“Keep lithe to be left living after its descent.”
*******, I’ve been saying that for years,
—now that I’m older—*******,
I’m talking about every kiss I’ve forgotten,
that is, everything we lose on way to Adulthood.
It’s unique, the imago state; most betokened of
His image, right? We are social creatures, too.
This year descends with the sand-bag weighting of
its guests, demons, its music and oxford commas.
And like every student here, inches of brick between
their sod-sleeping heads—I’m getting puttied muscles.
Grandfather clocks could only measure the pace
of time dripping from filter to lip right now.

[drag.]

So, out with it! Outwith disclaim and excuse!
Did these calendars and turmoils bide
inside, waiting? And I carried on dumb?
No, I couldn’t face it. To have any brag
or claim on consciousness you couldn’t.
And brag is the stuff of home and placement.
Too, I felt placed, and set, and spoilt, like
a full-soled step was took each step.
And then the rain came Sunday,
I knew a full periphery again, all that;
And now the center, too.

[drag.]

Berthed I become as I imagine the sky cloud.
Fixin’ to rain war and revelation.
This earth is a battlement now, I’ll fight.
The rolled cigarette, violent reality,
sweetly slipped into my mouth.
I never want to sound conclusive
(assertions, pretensions): keep repeating:
I’m just a sensitive thinker.
No better than like a decade’s
worth of culture, every conclusion
becomes irrelevant and useless
like an old law. An old decade
is entirely the footrest of the new,
and just as sturdy as He makes it.

[drag.]

I never understood the value of a dollar
‘till inside a tower over the campus
I tasted the thousand-dollar crime
of Security & Maintenance for climbing
a building. Tuition’s, now, an inkwell;
($)30,000 unmarked, illiterate words
and too much say with one bottle.
Same, too, with one purchase.
But still the shame of confusion
is an education in and of itself.
Confusion as useless as the future
and old criminals acquitted.

Take on another [name], any other,
so that God can call out to you
in the night. Well, I’m learning.
between this poems…[sic]
I’ve learned that names are your own,
so name the un-cut, -construed past
and all it is you, for safe-keep, see.
I’ve learned that a capitonym
is God by any other name :
Hope, Love-lorn, Terror.

Monistically, I’ve learned there is only
us, the namers, for so our charge was:
whatever the man called each living
creature, that was its name. And
that’s gotten us a lot of places,
i.e. hubris, tragedy, undoing.
But it’s its very syllables that undo.
So whisper. Snarl if needed. But
tack that trouble to tree and let it bleed.
This is your deer, your grace and past.
Yes, rotting there is your former muscle
and ideals, all prelude to this very moment.
Just as real and violent as when alive,
yourself, and yet confrontable,
yourself.

[drag.]

[extinguish.]

[exeunt.]