I walk old and gaunt
Floating ghostlike down old haunts
Martinelli
And Washington
And East Lake
I return
Far flung from a prodigal son.

Empty streets reflected in empty eyes
Power lines buzz in futile rebellion
To the silent black night.
I pull my jacket tight.

Stop at the Villager
In search of an old friend.
Security shakes me down
“Do you have a pocketknife?”
I laugh.
Look in at the eager faces.
They hail the old demon
I ran down in futile chases.
See Charlie and Sarge.
They’ve forgotten who I am
And shouldn’t remember
Anyway.

Turn back to the dark,
To the dim streetlights
Glowing exhausted and pale
Like me.
Light up,
And fill my lungs
With deathly relief.
Traffic lights mist
In cold colors
Where shadowed roads meet.

Something here died.
Something close,
Something warm.
I walk on,
Old and gaunt,
Floating ghostlike down old haunts.

My shadow is long.
It is measured by years
And drunk on my fears.

I raise trembling my hand
Watching my shadow stand
Stretching longer and longer,
Than my body.
(My shadow is stronger)
Than my body.

It severs from me
And gnashes its teeth.

My shadow's smile,
Stretches the mile,
On and on

Cause my shadow is long.

Once the world was whole.
Where my brother began,
Once my brother the soul,
Once my brother was whole.
When the world began.

Then.
Is fragmented. It
And shattered.
And

I look into each spinning shard,
Into myself and my loves,
Terrified of how they fall
Of how
Space will swallow them all.

The collapsing futures—
A tornado of sound,
Deafening the screams
Of the whole world,
The old world.

I seek the nexus.

I find you sometimes.
(Where you reside)
Where you are chained.
Where you are locked.
Where your mind slides.

Every lunge you make for escape,
Every rage filled step into space,
Smashes fragmented futures into
Further disfigured shapes.
I beg you:
“Stop.”
And you say like God:
“I have it all under control.”

But you are crying.
Do you see (I think you see)
You are lying.

And I have nowhere to go
But gone.

I emerge bearing a piece of your burden
Like
A brain in barbed wire, or
A flame cupped from your fire;
Or maybe just
The piece that is mine to keep.

In the morning
We have a cup of coffee
Watch the sun come up or
Drape a blanket over our
Bodies that don’t move so well,
Not so well as they used to,
Not so well as they did when
We were all fire and heart.

Because now the kids are grown and
Time has changed yet again,
Into a stillness full like a constant
Roast and potatoes in the winter
Heating the house
Drifting to us as we arrive
Saying “sit, stay for a spell, eat and be loved.”

That day isn’t tomorrow
Or the next
But a lighted window on a dark night.
I’m wandering toward it
Holding her hand.
Sometimes I pull, sometimes she does.

The world keeps turning
One stroke and the axis roars
God, it spins fast enough to break
All the fragile things we made
A thousand times over

But I’ve got a secret:
I’ve got someone
That makes it so
The world doesn’t spin so fast.

And someday,
When love is forever,
In the morning
We have a cup of coffee
Watch the sun come up.