the ways in which things happen
are like guerrilla warfare.
the future would not be
itself, that title would not be not born
if we could predict its nature.

this is not going nowhere.
I have a reason for everything I'm saying,
I swear.
you were never patient
and I still cannot spend a second
without having second thoughts.

we are always in the wrong.
it's the wrong place,
the wrong time,
the wrong person--
the wrong person you're kissing
in the wrong bathroom stall,
the wrong way in which
they're touching your hair.

then again, the word "wrong"
is subjective.
if you were at all suspicious
you would be writing poems as conspicuous
as mine.
but you don't write at all.
you were all edges, no art;
nothing tore you apart.

I always thought the timing was wrong,
but now I think it irrelevant.
I still hope that you knew what I meant
when I said "please don't."
and I have a clock whose hands stopped moving
around the time that yours did.
the second hand still quivers
it makes a ticking sound
through every night.
if this was the wrong time,
I could not tell it from the right.

south of *****
lies the winding river
where you baptized me.
or at least that's what
it felt like
when we waded naked
in the murky green water;
a sign of heaven
that required veneration
of corporeal sin.

We sat alone in that cottage by the sea --
you crying through your bony shoulders,
me quietly comforting you,
a long way from home.
allaying your headache
with small doses of *****.
i'm trying to fix you, I am,
but the teapot broke last night,
and there's grass growing up
through the cracks in the floor.
you were in the rocking chair when you said
"I've forgotten what your voice sounds like"
and I broke down.
it's so loud, the ocean as it ebbs and flows
I pushed just one wave back
and expected the whole of the seas to
bow down to me.
I'm sorry that we didn't have more time.
I'm sorry that I was too late.
But I'm mostly sorry that I dug myself up
when you needed the roots firmly in place.
the selfishness that I keep close
has too small a space
to sustain life.
I enshrouded you with a heavy blanket,
draped it across those bony shoulders,
but you maintained your gaze
into the distance.
across the water,
into another continent.
I'm sorry this wasn't enough,
but i'll leave the door unlocked.

19 jan

He is the opening cords of every song.
He is the sound "sh."
He is the tree held up by stakes,
  He is the stakes being whittled down to size.
He is inside the rough, back-and-forth motions of the pocketknife as it scratches off the bark.
He is the red, callous hands of the blade-wielding woodsman.
He is the brown,
     the deer,
          the drowning,
                the dirt.
He never leaves footprints,
but he always leaves early--
He is the soft light of dawn,
                              never here for very long.
We remember him but we do not
  yearn for him, we do not live for him.

He is the dead, brown shrubbery pushing through the melting snow,
                         all bent, no direction,
                                  no preconceived intent.
Oh, but he's reawakening, it's almost spring,
                   he's growing above everything.
We take out the stakes and he does just fine.

I had a dream last night that you read my poetry out loud to me,
and at the word "mask" you used a low,
                                   definitive tone.
                              It was your voice.
It resonated within me as I realized that
I knew you well enough to construct
        the exact frequencies of your vocal range
while I was asleep.
It was your face, too.
                        Grinning, but holding back,
                             half afraid,
                                   half elated.
That's all I remember from that dream.
When I woke up I remembered the basic framework
but not the voice, or the face,
                           just the words.

There have been tears and laughter and
                                       screams and chatter,
     but nothing is going to be worse
                                      than the inevitable silence.

when shuttle feeds show the earth on fire
and unprovened ashes stray from the pyre
  ammonium nitrate will still be there
   to keep us unvitiated, cold, and bare.
    not that we'll need it, the sun can warm
     with its dying light it is no longer "aurum"
      but "ater."
     lying next to me, a body in destitution
    rags and bones and circumlocution
   no medicine can fix you, no analeptic drug
  only the attraction of the gravitational tug
for when we are done with cosmic consorts,
we will be only sedimentary quartz.

I. Knowing you,
it's like a dream.
I'm not referring to perfection or
personal desire,
because both are insufficient excuses
for lack of motivation, lack of action.
No, I'm talking about the way in which you remind me of the dreams I scramble to write down when I wake up from them.
The ones I'm able to put into complete sentences,
not that they'd make any sense.
Usually it's just words and images separated by hyphens, commas, space--
                             but not this time.
  It still doesn't make sense.
This whole story, it's incomprehensible, it's between a nightmare and a daydream. The fuzzy edges, the tilt-shift,
        the vibrant colors that I can't remember, the way in which we never touch each other.
Can you recall ever running your fingers over,
embracing,
biting, scratching,
feeling a tangible object within a dream?
Maybe it's a personal experience.
But this disconnection, this feeling like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, it's too outlandish, too surreal.
There's too much periphrasis.
I'm not an interface.

II. There's a windowpane, freshly scrubbed--
Through it I can see everything, comprehend
everything. the smallest details proffered in high contrast and high saturation.
But I reach out and my fingers bump and bend awkwardly as they come into contact with it, minimally smudging it.
Sorry about that.
When I walk into the room you look at me with such bewilderment,
as if I've come back from the dead,
but you're too scared to touch me--
               I'm a ghost, I'm a mirage, a phantasm,
I'm a stone sculpture erected in memory
   of who I used to be.
Who did I used to be?
I've been resurrected,
but do you want me revitalized?
It concerns me that I need verification,
but even more that I'm concerned
with the fact that I can't get it, it's too hard to read, it's in another language, or it's too blurry.
I told you this doesn't make any sense.
"You think about death a lot"--
I'm sorry about that too.
I've been trying to be more unapologetic.
I don't quite think it's working.

III. So, about this:
I'm not quite sure of the direction
it needs to go in;
it would benefit from a clean dissection--
we should talk about this.
And we have.
But nothing seems to work;
I don't know how to get through to you,
I don't know how to break the glass.
          What would I tell you? I don't know.
  I've already told you so much,
and you me.
Why did you tell me all of that?
These ulterior motives in an ulterior dimension, they differ so profusely from the world where I write dreams down; the real one.
You inquired once about the differences between who I was in voice and in action.
I didn't have a good answer,
but I wanted to ask the same of you.
Stop looking at me like that,
         you know what I'm talking about.
Say something. Please.
It doesn't have to be like this,
I could wake up from this dream and everything could be almost the same,
if you'd agree to it.