there are bystanders
and there are activists,
the ones who care enough
to attempt some futile rebellion
by taking a seat on the wrong side
of the couch.
it doesn't sound like much,
but it is.

lately,
your hands are always
on that bottle of glue.
I guess it's better
than a bottle
of something else.

look at me,
the famished beggar
quenched and grateful
and silent
in consumption.

I do take hold of it
and clutch it in my palm
even if you can't see it.

and then, the impact.
it comes quickly
in lambent fractals
an unsettling, gleaming mess
of lightheadedness
and holds me in paralysis.

It doesn't belong to me.
it never did.
and there is still that guilt
buried deep within;
it howls in the night
and whispers incessantly
in the afternoons.

it is dry gluttony
incarnate in the hardest
of gazes, of nights in indigo
and in the softest
of ratted fabrics.

look, I remembered for once.
that's a step
in the right direction
but I've still got so far to go.

don't you know
you have so little time,
in the blink of an eye,
the flutter of a lash
you'll be insipid ash.

you've got to go
it's better you're blinded
by crimson sand and salt
than you stay and wait
for a hurricane.

the torrents, these downpours
but we all stay the same --
we refuse to move away
from the shore.

it was coming,
arriving on a train --
some silent, mouthed anticipation
recalled to life,
finally.
soon the house had no walls;
we were living in huts made of twigs,
trying to kindle a small fire
in the snow.
surrounded by darkness
and the occasional passing car,
we leapt from star to star
in the cobalt haze of the night.
there,
a bright spot,
a sort of celestial fortuity.
all of the sudden I was not so alone.
I walked in your footsteps
on the path to your house.
knee deep in snow,
being careful not to stop moving,
but still wary to move at all.
I remember we were falling,
falling, falling down
(well, I was falling,
you were helping me up)
then running, running,
racing through the streets
to ensure our return
before anyone knew where we were,
or who we were.
I remember you taking my hand
which was wet with a layer of snow
and numb to the bone.
I couldn't feel yours at all.
maybe that was the idea.
there is always a guilt,
but it was mitigated here;
for one night
that terrible swelling in my throat
did not swallow me whole.
but you cannot open the floodgates
and expect to stay dry.
I am slowly learning why this is true.
I only hope that I will live to tell about it.

This is the first and last time
that the moon and the planets will align
in such a shape.
At least, the last instance until the sun burns up.
You said "Look out your window."
I did. I looked out;
I blamed the window when I couldn't see it.
then I went outside
it was negative nine degrees
and my face was set to freeze
yet the moon remained hidden.
I drove to the end of the winding road
in the orange darkness
Even in the opening of the trees
there was no lunar disclosure,
no planetary apparitions
to soothe the frostbite I inflicted
when I stuck my head out of the sunroof window.
I never found what I sought
I feel robbed, violated
a sense of entitlement
(wrongly felt, I suppose).
Then again there is a guilt
when something is so beautiful
that there is an obligation to share it
but it was then refuted by the premature death
of this moon,
and by an acute tardiness
held tightly in a clenched fist.
Next time I promise not to miss something
so revolutionary
and sensitive to time.
It was fleeting,
we tried to catch and match it
like lining up squares of cloth to cut
"Isn't it funny how everyone is seeing
the same moon?"
Look out your window before it's too late,
drive until you can't feel your hands
or your face or really anything at all
and come back full of life.

17 feb: offbeat

I couldn't stop thinking about
grey tartan and gin
and soft pink skin.
Cigarettes and typewriters,
drops of ink on the paper
leading away from the word
"desperation."

But there it was.
"I'm leaving for the afternoon.
Your choice is to prune
the bushes or to water them."
What was I to do?
I liked them full and so did you.

You were frantic.
As though you'd misplaced something
when really you were just searching
for a fishing net.
"Look at the sunset."
Oh but it's gone, it's over, I'm sorry.

[Friend, friend
do not cower or back down
from this but know
that I am listening for you,
to you, always.]

Left to rot,
built to spill,
one of us was always ill.
I was waiting for you to come home--
I have not touched the bushes yet.

11 feb, 16:03

It has just happened.
There was a lot I said
    and a lot I didn't --
                    couldn't.
What was I supposed to say?
Your feet were always shuffling
     like you wanted to leave right away,
       your fingers ruffling your hair incessantly.
It was as if you were never content with
the way things were at that exact moment,
                    and you did what you could
                              to change them.

My favorite record
                  is broken.
This particular one is my voice
   saying "I'm sorry,"
and then yours -- "You shouldn't be apologizing."
It's just that,
    over and over,
        it won't stop and I'm not going to stop it,
                    that's for sure.

Disillusionment is a virtue for some.
For me, it was every minute I spent with you.
     I'm not sure why, but I think it's time
  I started paying attention.
We are always walking, walking,
     strutting around in circles to avoid talking,
        and getting lost, always getting lost.
Another virtue: honesty.
        What is lying by omission anyway?
           How much should one reveal?
And what is forbearance?
It has just happened. It has
                               just happened
       and I am still lost.

You left yourself there.
I guess I was so used to seeing you
against those walls
and never pinning you to them
that I began to wonder
if you ever left that room.
It was never warm where we were
but we wore coats.
We listened for the howling wind
and turned our backs against it.
Your cheeks were flushed
and I could not help but rush
to look away.
You had this way of making people feel
like they were seeing something they shouldn't.
I am not very clever
but I know this:
you were happy and hopeless
and I tore that down.
You were a lark building his nest,
so timeless, so graceful, and I can attest
to the fact that you were content
exactly where you were.
There it is--
there is the difference between us.
I was a different sort of tired than you were;
mine was perpetual boredom with the world
while yours was a pleasant aching
deriving from a day of labor.
As I said,
you were the type to build a nest.
I was the sort that aspired to fly to heaven,
and hit a windowpane instead.
Call me Icarus,
and I will call you magpie.
I have never been one for terms of endearment,
but these seem to fit,
don't you think?
In a dream you met me for the second time. In the same dream you left the city, something you swore you'd never do.
In a dream you shone out
like everything I had ever been told
about the end, the eschaton.
Maybe you were meant to crush the serpent.
Maybe I was meant to write the book of Revelation.
We are not alive to exist in captivity but to consider how we might one day escape.

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.