I took out a pen and some paper, looseleaf,
Not worth the words I sponged onto it but it’ll do
I wrote down my feelings about everything
The silence of people on a subway ride to work
The closest star to us that isn’t the Sun
How the Bermuda Triangle got its shape and why the other ones
Weren’t cut out for it
Were it not for the clocks in my room, serving as reminders
That time still existed and would far outlive me
I swear I would have written forever
I swear I would have

Sometimes I would write letters to friends and never send them
Instead cram them into envelopes and into larger envelopes
And stack them in the fireplace, under the wood
And sometimes light it, other times just hold out my hands
And feel invisible warmth

The ones I did send, though, felt hollow
Words typed or written but not the words I needed
Or wanted
To say then. I’d rather ask you how your day was than to receive
A strange ****** expression because a question concerning
Cosmic dust and how it rushes together to create man
Doesn’t really serve as a good icebreaker.
Most of the unsent letters were to you
You and the clouds that guide you around, shifting rain
Back toward the sky

I wrote how are you today?
And meant I want you to keep auditioning for dance because you’re wonderful
I wrote doesn’t this weather feel strange?
And meant get a bigger umbrella so I can be under it too
We should try to go for dinner
We need to have an excuse to be together
Are tattoos a bad thing?
Look, topics to occupy us
My house is empty tonight
Where are you so late and what do you think about?
I miss the vase we sold
I miss you
I feel like today is longer than yesterday and will be shorter than tomorrow
I miss you

And they stacked, one upon the other
The spaces between each squeezed under the weight of the next
The weight of the words compounded more than the previous
Filling the spaces of my apartment to the point where
I could not see out the windows

“Today is Monday the 16th.  To whom it may concern, I’ve contemplated the ideas laid before me and can finally take confidence that I’ve chosen the right one. Many people say that virtuosity is next to solace and I believe that. Many people also claim that it takes a life to learn how to live, and I believe that too. I’ve so many things to say to everyone, even the people I’ve only met once or twice. But those people are just as important.

I can hear echoing between the televisions between the open rooms. The same words delayed by seconds but still audible and clear.  The reactions aren’t echoed, they’re different, variant on the person and how they feel about it. To make sense of my claim, I guess it’s just a matter of perspective, and now my perspective is clear, and now I want it to echo between the people to whom I send these letters. Whether the variation between reactions will be the same or not I am all-around unclear, but I know the reactions may have enough weight to keep me held to the ground, or even a bit lower than that. Either way, I’ve spent my life reacting to things as if acting on an echo.  I want to change the channel now. I want to close my door so the sound can fill the room and make the stacks of unsent letters shudder. I want to keep it there and turn the air the color of the closest star to us other than the Sun. I want to-“

I wanted a lot of things, to do and to say
But that letter and those that followed joined the others in the quiet spaces
Spaces which kept the frays of this life muffled and still
Like an ocean scooped into a bucket
Or the world’s smallest word
Backspaced by one letter

-



Dismiss my wandering eyes
They’re catching a drape, not you
They’re creeping along a cobblestone sidewalk
Not you



Dismiss my clamping cough
It’s there because the Spring is not good to me
It’s not there because you are good to me
Which, you always are, have I mentioned



It will not stop here
In, of all places, a little side-street pub
Where we both always seem to be
At the same time



It will not just stop
Like a chamber orchestra after a
Long night of tuning and unreal sound
Where outside it’ll flow



Ignore the tone of my voice
When it shifts up, it stays up
I won’t drop it for you, not until
You drop it first



And you get closer to where I am
One less stool between us every day
And nobody notices
But the people who sat in them, those air people



And I’m certainly not kidding when
I beg you to tell me things
Like the ghosts between us
Are only shapes of us



Tell me we’re all the same
Little lobsters in a tank
Clawing at water
We’re the same



Tell me I was always too nice
To confront a total stranger
And ask
The greatest question of all



-

-


I could imagine reacting to life on other worlds the way a

Tribal sponge cleaner would react to a washing machine

As he reluctantly prods it with one of his burnt-out torches

He’d made for his wife for their anniversary



All the scientists gather around the looking glass, scribbling gargantuan words

And pushing up their glasses, speculating whether or not

The language they spoke had been the correct one at all



I could visualize them as they stepped out of their spaceship

Wandering around a grassy patch, careful to keep a safe distance



A wisp of clouds inch overhead,

To us a common thing, to them a phenomena they’d been told

Around a fireplace made of stars, stories counted and recounted

About the clouds and the strange way they danced on the opposite side of the galaxy



Stacking papers on their desks, the scientists retire home and

Dream of how they’d tell the public about what they had found

As Times Square flickers to a still of the alien’s face

The people below suddenly feel much less significant



-

-



And as winter fell upon the river
The fish calmly claiming each droplet
There stood four, slow-footed men in trenchcoats,
Huddled around a grave.


From each hand a flower dangled
“Her favorite” one of them untangled
From each hand a subtle ****
“Always was,” one agreed


The fish retreated to their coves
Any left snatched by the crows
Leaving the men there, with their mother
Wind pressing them to one another


And as the sun reached to the snow
It was the last to see her go;
Whereas the moon rose from the shore -
Millions of snowflakes, millions more



-

-



I’ve been accepted in a number of small-town organizations,
Constructed by some confetti-fetishists who craved nothing more than
To write their thoughts onto the underside of a bridge,
Abandoned due to incredible uprisings of what some would call faux water.

They’d told me,
Multiple times actually,
That I was bound to their ideals and morals forever;
That they’d essentially taken the parts of my brain that mattered
And the sections of my heart I knew couldn’t feel emotion but
Hoped dangerously that they, under suitable conditions, just might
And tossed them into a box
Snuck down to the river
Let it drift away as I slept alone.

I’ve been afraid to try new things, always afraid,
Always wandering about with a finger to the air and a
Paintbrush to mark where I‘ve been.

To think that they “saved me,”
Or “kept me from a suicidal afterparty” is now
Only a thought rather than action.

And now
Slowly, gently,
He lift a glass of dust to his mouth
Wondering who he used to be
As I watch myself from the corner.



-

There were happy times while at Home, where the sun
Licked the rims of our glasses and sent wayward strands of light
Streaking across an almost-empty tabletop,
Save for a slight shifting of sand in the only hourglass
I would ever need to own.

There were sad times too, don't forget
Like whenever the storms intruded on our mid-afternoon slumbers
And sent our dreams flying in a saturated mess of
Unfinished riverboat cruises and superhero simulations;
Underneath it all, though, it became impossible not to try it again.

We're going to return here someday, paying close attention to
A world that had preserved itself for the sake of preservation
A life that had spent its last weekends alone on the edge of the sea
Where everything within it collected and became a mosaic of
Saturated dreams and hourglasses cut in two -
Sand mixing with sand.