I caught her singing "Clair de Lune"
when she thought my gaze had wandered to
the girl from the bar, in the red dress and blue shoes
who snag happier, more uplifting tunes;
not that sad, quiet beauty by the light of the moon.

I caught her sighing, pining for release
from the pain of what she was feeling then
Her heart filled her lungs, and she sang out again
that lonely, impossible masterpiece;
that showcase of her heart's discontent.

I wept; should have come from my hidden den
but instead I watched, silent tears blurring my sight.
Though I should by rights have swept her into my arms,
I watched as she sang "Clair De Lune" long into that lonely night,
unsure if my presence would bring to her face a smile... or alarm.

The first, if I could but for a moment see, I'd trade away my immortal soul.
The second, rather than let it be, I would happily die,
                                                                                     silent and alone.

the sea was never so still
as the night i spilled my guts
in the sink from vanilla pills
and laughed at my immortality

when i scream underwater
the blue screams back to me
in my maraschino heart
i know one thing to be true:
that the cooing and the howling
will never leave the ocean floor
and fall upon the waiting ears
of those who i meant it for

I don’t know how this happened

but here’s a brief summary of what I do know:
At some point in history
a rodent belonging to a group of large ground squirrels
known as marmots
peaked it’s head through the ground
and fell headfirst into the all of mankind.
Observant as we are
we watched said rodent,
presumably for decades,
we named that rodent marmota monax
we named that rodent woodchuck
we named that rodent groundhog
and then
be it because we were drunk
or tired
or deliriously confused by our purpose in this life,
we decided that the entire pendulum of winter
swung on one insignificantly particular day of the year
when a groundhog with a proper name
emerges from his burrow
and either does or does not see his shadow
because the sky either is or is not overcast.

It’s that kind of thinking that brought us here
into the swell of feeling like we are designed to repeat ourselves
same way train tracks prove that most circles are not perfect,
a freight train and a record player tell similar stories.

It’s that kind of thinking that brought us here
into the shape of a species who even on our best day
is literally not satisfied with the everything that has ever existed
same way our taking of selfies is a detriment to releasing ourselves
from the all that we ever were
when all we have are these constant reminders.

I never asked you to be pretty or handsome or perfect
just ready and honest
and willing to take nothing to bed with you
just knowing how to emerge from your slumber
with the entire pendulum of a season
pivoted on your correlation with a specific source of light.
Look at me
my eyes are trying to tell you a story in real time
about how I’d give up the sunburn to live in your shadow
so long as I was never a cloud in your sky.

You are a needle
touching the spiraling grooves
in every square inch of this earth
picking up the vibrations
which you then translate into the sound
of your existence

I’m all ears.

I don’t know how this happened
but one morning I woke up
at the exact
same time
as I woke up the day before
with a song
stuck in my head—
it was you

it was you with a harmony
it was you with a record scratch
it was you with a slow fade

it was you
and you kept telling me,
you said, “Frankie,
if you keep waiting for Bill Murray to show up
you're never gonna make sense of anything."