Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.

this is irrational. in mathematics, the human reasoning - there will always be some sort of radical fallacy shoved into the equation. you. you sir, are what i call irrational. i can't lie when i say that i'm quite fond over how tall you stand, like a mountain. like a king. you don't rule the valleys and praries of your people, but you've found power along capalliries and veins. this box jutting irregularly in my chest is what you rule. i could construct motes and bridges and stone castle walls to keep you from getting in, but i can't deny i've always wanted to be a queen. your queen. i've never wanted so badly to rule your world. to take the throne and call you mine.

Either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to ***** and rail
at, I had no male
friends,

I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,

I didn't have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, 'I am going
to have to let you go'

'it's all right' I tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, *******,
singing,the
works.

(don't get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of
itself-
this is a shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I didn't fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I made them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares, lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a baby's
****.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wife in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
I ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

I kissed her in the
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

you’re so beautiful
sometimes I don’t think I’ve ever
seen a creature more beautiful
but then I remember how much
you hate yourself
and suddenly am aware
that you aren’t as beautiful
as you could be
if you recognized your own
beauty. Because self hatred
is not pretty. Although there is a strange
beauty in it, it is not pure.
It is not full. It is cryptic
and raw and utterly
selfish. There is beauty in that.
But not enough to make me
fall in love with you
again.

There was a time—and this wasn't all that long ago—where I wanted to be seen, loved, admonished. I wanted to be some novelist casanova, women, movie deals, et cetera. And one day it changed. I wish there was some monumental event tied to it, some clear catalyst, but to be honest this opposite idea, this idea of erasure, came to me in a supermarket. In the checkout line the cashier didn't greet me, didn't ask the usual did-you-find-everything type questions. The transaction was wholly procedural, nothing human to it. The total showed up on a screen. I swiped a card.

And it reminded me of that part in DeLillo's—I know, it's always DeLillo—in his book Zero K where he talks about the origin of "alone," and what the word really connotes. The word is a rather simple portmanteau of the Middle English phrase "all one." And when you think of the word like this, all one, it gives you a different idea. It does for me anyway. All one suggests freedom from any tie or association. It's who you are minus geography, minus desire, minus friends, minus family, minus lovers. Many people would say there is no self if you were to eliminate essentially the entire context of your life, but I disagree.

I say all of this to say, I'm hitting the red button. I'm eliminating all my friendships to regain a semblance of an inner life. I think they've become responsible for a projected version of myself, an expected version rife with inconsistencies that I wish to no longer adhere to. I know what you're thinking. I'm going to be some half-assed buddhist of the plains, but this small world I've played a small part in shaping has become suffocating, and the only way for me to exist in this space is as a vapor.

I.

I lay beside the canals in Esmeralda, city of water.
For hours a shadow and an oar and a boat approach,
and in the distance unseen girls hum a melody,
a melody not wholly unlike the sound of the lapping waves.
The sun rises and sets in a matter of moments.
My skin crinkles, molts, regenerates as fresh
as a babe's. I think of father, of mother, the words
not the people. My hands move now on their own.
The left points to the Saint Cloud Bridge and I say,
Saint Cloud. I'm in my body but outside it. A little god.
A deliberate historian. I record everything.
I think I always did. My right hand waves
to an acrobat on a clothesline. Behind
the acrobat a small stucco home crumbles
and rebuilds itself. My right palm
covers my mouth and I kiss it.
The veins running down my arms
appear to be filled with different colored inks,
reds, blues, greens. A shadow and an oar and
a boat approach, closer, closer.
A single swallow flies above the water, dipping down,
wetting the tips of its wings, climbing upwards over the
balconies, the rooftops, the sun setting, the sun rising,
blessing its flight. My right hand traces my uneven
and ever shifting face. What did I look like as a boy?
Did I have many friends?

II.

The shadow offers his hand, eases me aboard
his small boat. We push off back the way he came.
He says a few words to me, the
only words exchanged on our long journey:
I used to live in the city, he says. It nearly
drove me mad. I moved to the country.
I cultivated a garden. I installed a wood stove.
This was healthy.

III.

A small delight, to watch the shadow
command the oar, the grace in it.
I think of a woman's dress. I think
of the word rustle. I feel the word rustle.
My left hand points to the shoreline.
Spanish moss hangs from a bald cypress.
I say the word, Fire, and the Spanish moss becomes
engulfed. I say, Stop, and everything
stops, even the sun. Its position makes
me think the phrase six o'clock. While
Esmeralda, the city entire, is locked
in my rule, I step out onto the water.
I find I can walk across it. I know the
city's name, but I'm not sure I ever lived
here. The blades of grass feel foreign
on the soles of my feet.

IV.

Four has always been my favorite number,
I think. A lightning bug emits a flash of green.
It is the only creature unstuck and I follow it.
It leads me through a snow covered valley,
through a yellowed wheat field, through
a suspended dust storm. I brush away the particles
and they drop to the cracked earth.
I'm in a desert now. A woman sits with her legs
crossed. I sit with her. I feel the urge to tell her
a joke. It's apparent. She feels the same urge.
We both try to get the words out, but we keep
laughing, our minds rushing to the punchline.
Before we finish our jokes, we die. We decompose.
We turn to skeletons, our bony mouths full of ash.
We're born again, our joy and humor now with a depth centuries old.
We laugh, death much easier than we'd expected.
We try to tell the jokes again. The cycle beings and ends and begins.
The lightning bug insists that we move on.

I'm led to a gate. Guarding the gate is a girl
with a red ribbon in her yellow hair.
I ask if I can call her maiden.

I can almost see through the girl.
Rolling hills and a crystal stream
serve as her backdrop just beyond
the gate. She summons me with
a gentle wave of her hand.
I lean down. She kisses me.

You're my first kiss, she says.

I hope I'm not your last.

She takes my hand and insists we walk backwards.
The ground is uneven, my feet unsure.

There's an old saying I'm sure you know, she says.
The definition of madness is doing the same thing
and expecting a different result. This applies to more
than recurring bad decisions. It applies to death.

What are you saying? I've been expecting a different death?

You've been expecting a different consequence of death,
but you keep dying the same way, the girl says. Watch me.
Be curious. But say no more. Don't diffuse death of its
wild alchemy.

We walk backwards through the gate.
I want a secret, something
the girl doesn't know about me, one
dark moment to add dimension. But
the thought lurks that she knows
more about me than me. Time speeds
up. Day turns to night. Snow feathers
down. Backwards we walk into empty
homes, into dry riverbeds, into the unknown.
We begin to fall. From what, I'm not sure.
To where, I'm not sure.
The girl grips my hand tightly.

When will I know that I've died?

Shhh, she says. No words. Only wonder.

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.