"And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."
                                        --- Leonard Cohen

I'm the most surprised person on the planet.
Your coming to see me off at the airport
has my mind scratching glass seeking words.
Why is it that in this relationship,
you seem to have gotten all the speaking parts?
You're well aware that I have loved you
for the better part of two years,
bottling that emotion, afraid to pop the cork.
Your eyes implore mine, rotating like
a searchlight over Baghdad seeking
the stealth laying carnage to your heart.
Twice in the last week you've made it evident,
the Grail was mine, but for the drinking ---
That and finding a shorthand for adultry.
I'm guilty courting the love of a married woman,
made worse, you're here at my departure
telling me we aren't free to choose who we love.
I know my desire must die of thirst,
so I turn, boarding pass in hand,
the last words I ever hear from you,
Write me! --- Thirty-five years later I have.

Time was, when I thought it strong,
to hold back and block all my feelings.
Inestimable the emotional devastation
I doled out on those unfortunates who loved me.
How can you dam it up so?, said the therapist's stare,
still her empathy opened my mind to smiling,
chiseled my heart from the glacier.
And slowly I learned to act out my dreams,
the wounded clown learned to cry.
Pride bled in the thickets of human *******.
Now, when I dream of life, I am perfectly amazed,
my singular life drawn to those who loved me regardless.

Onyx night drinks up the stars,
swallows the moon alive,
a constrictor engulfs
my eyes as prey.

Ghost roars its displeasure,
lest mortals dare to stare,
past the line of trees,
that burns to galactic core.

My sight averts the horizon,
forcing this universe
to make quantum choices,
who sees what and when.

All elsewheres being equal,
the Monarch Butterfly
prefers to winter
in Michoacan.

You told me once
that even chairs have souls.
Since then I've grieved
for all the dim sum.

Imagination is so ******,
an odd portal
for poetry,
which explains the sweat.

I'd give all
the taxis in Vegas
for a do-over
before I'm obsolete.

So, I'm heading
for Michoacan
to winter
in the sweat.

I endured spiritual time dilation in life's stasis field,
held to a course you unwittingly set for us 40 years ago.
Back then, I knew instictively you were my beacon,
never doubted I should follow blindly, without question,
even when I lost sight and only drifted the cosmos,
always the gyroscope spinning in my head
whispered, She's still out there, leading.

So, I absorbed whatever light filtered in,
performing some manner of karmic photosynthesis,
noxious vapors escaping, replaced by vital oxygen,
a mere algae amongst humanities' phytoplankton.
And when the time-space coordinates aligned,
you re-materialized, as you'd always been there,
my sister, my spirit-guide, my love.

I cannot restore the lakes that teemed with fish,
nor the maples cultivated by the Mohawk,
the Adirondacks now more remote than boyhood,
a lost dark conversation with jejune oblivion.

Events became the storyline of my life,
and events were always stronger than resolve.
My journey took me inward without time schedule,
dredged up expediencies as layovers.

Still, I felt drawn to the people,
who bejeweled my dreams in neuron flashes,
became therapy, billboards along the escape route.
Turned out that vital knowledge would suffice.

Your promised proof lacks rigor
and riots down the corridors of logic,
strong women bleeding inside,
all their energy confined in a wind tunnel.

I am not persuaded that my sisters are a dream,
though they die the long death of injustice.
How their voices swarm in my windows,
like maddening windchimes in a storm!

Your promised proof a color on no spectrum.
I set sail with the tide seeking forgiveness,
seeking the Newland where men do not subduct,
where oceans merge with female currents.