The birds call from the vines clenching the church
next door but it’s the drums that clatter
me from sleep 8 o’clock Sunday morning
into that good prelude to the hangover
where you’re ***** and lucid as the young grey light
sneaks through the window without it’s  pants.

I have no girl with me, so I remember you
by your rambunctious smell, not at all like the perfumes
on the shelf of the Rite-Aid, your feral hair,
the wide wing-span of your eyes.
I click right past your text. Leave me alone again.
Alone is where we belong. We can give each other that.

She didn’t mean that much to me.
I’m not sure what does. I’m not sure anything can
in the delirious corral of this city.
You’re the last girl I’ve got to think of.
Maybe you regret that. Maybe you don’t know.

The D-train sleepwalks the bridge.
The Gowanus lays down and dies. The Hudson does not.
I am a Mummy in ***** brown sheets.
I turn up the volume on the birds and go back to sleep.

How did I get so far
away from everything?
I am such a small person,
with such a small scope,
and such small knowledge,
How did I get such large opinions?

I've never been anywhere
close to love.
It's all I've wanted.

How did I get here
and not there
in your arms?

What is this misunderstanding,
this judgement
leading me to?

Is it bringing me
the long way around
to love?
Is it taking me
the long way home
to you?

I want to see how long
her hair has grown.

When I kissed her
she grabbed her face
and went, "****. ****. ****."

The flowers she gave me
are in an empty wine bottle
still dead and beautiful.

I don’t know why.
I had you pinned to the bed
and you were finally gonna let me
kiss you. I wanted it to be perfect
so I got up to turn off the TV or
light a candle and I don’t know
what happened but I still haven’t
kissed you and you got married
in April.

The way you looked
at me: ***** and smug,
I haven’t seen anything like it
in years. I’ve subsisted on fumes.
It’s not easy concocting that
in a woman.
I tried to kiss you once before.
We sat on my porch.
You stroked my
hair. I leaned in.
You ducked out of the way
quicker than if I'd
thrown a fastball at your head.

You went back home to the South.
I commemorated my survival
by putting a black X through
each day on the calendar.
Love was finally going to happen to me.
Every day I was getting closer,
or further away,
I'm still not sure which.

I had a lot of dreams about you then.
I wanted them. If I couldn't
have you during the day, I’d make you
visit me in the night.
Once you were wearing
a sweater that gleamed like snow,
my lips touched yours like a bow
on a violin string.
We were both looking for clues,
for God or Fate to tell us what to do.
You crashed your car after you told me
on the phone your friends thought
we should be together forever.
You stopped talking to me after that.
I cried for three days and nights,
but I felt like I should've cried longer.
Tears came all the way from
the tips of my fingers,
the soles of my feet.
That grief was the last time
I knew how to use every part of myself.

I saw you next in a bowling alley.
There was some other guy
you were getting attention from.
He wasn't your boyfriend either.
You were so nice to me
that I knew it was over.
I wondered what God was trying
to tell me and decided He was
******* with me (a bowling alley!)
so I stopped listening altogether.

I haven’t had as much love
(or, more likely, ***)
in my life as I planned on.
I’ve withheld reservoirs,
waiting for the right girl,
my energy going into work,
leaking away in various diversions.
Meanwhile, she’s yet to show up.
It’s a hobby of mine,
entertaining suspicions
that she might’ve been you.

Once I sent you a message
saying I’d do anything
to make love to you.
That’s not exactly true,
but that doesn’t make it
a lie either.

I had a dream about you.
Someday my kiss
will land on your lips.

She'll do.
She's a rough approximation of you
without the sense of humor.
She'll do
and she did.

Rough drafts come through
the window.
A woman like that will only let you
get away with her for so long.
Every time she left
I was paranoid she wasn't coming back.
I'm turning into John Cusack
with my LPs in a stack.
She's never coming back.

I write my ****** heart out for you.

It's so early
I'm forgetting
what she looks
like
when I haven't
seen her
for a couple
days.

I want to
see
her all
the time

to memorize
her quicker
than she
is disappearing.

I catch
what moments
I can

like flaming snow
from a firework
shriveling to
ash

in
my fingers.



Boredom, with
its table
of
queer
instruments,
deals
out
its
agony.

In a German
accent
it urges
me to
go
outside,
to busy
myself
to look
away so
the hours can slip by
unnoticed.

I
refuse.

I want to
be alone
with the
pain,

the palpable
absence,
the
only feeling
equal
to her presence.

This pain
is the proper
debt for
what
she will
bring.

Out of
the
dark,
her face
comes
in a
flash.
She is beginning
to live
in me
already.

The memories
are slowly
fusing
to my
flesh.

Imagination is remembering
a future
that
never comes
true.

I can almost remember
the future

the future
where she
is hiding,
waiting.

All these words
and nothing to say

It's lonely at the top
but it's also lonely
on the bottom

How many years can one spend
not getting anywhere?

Oh God.
I look up and
here I am
in this life again

Surrounded by
the same people
the same walls
the same food
the same words

But I don't want to find it yet.
I don't want to get there yet.
I want to stay lost.
I want to get more lost
so you will come find me.

What kind of man do you require?
A little boy questioning your sleeve?
A wealthy man held together by a suit?
A rolling hog who won't perspire?
Whatever the answer, it's surely moot.

You're no use knowing what you should receive;
Only once given can you know.
There's hungers in us we can't see the source.
It's all well and good holding what you believe
but what you need comes without a choice.

You'd sooner stop the wind to blow
then stop me coming through your door.
I know your blood, I can stem the flow
and if you ask I'll make it roar.

I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.

There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.

But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.

It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.