I wake up slowly
like slow-motion, like soft jazz,
like every movie you've ever seen
about tragedy,
where the main character fades in from black
and
the sound of a cell phone ringing gets louder as the camera focuses
and the person,
let's call it a her, and let's call her Sally
Sally
opens her eyes
and it's like a mist or a fog still
for a few seconds
which are their own unique eternity and existence
and then Sally answers the cell phone
says "hello?" in that groggy, confused way people do when they've just woken up
and then the room is quiet
and then Sally's head is full of ringing
and you never know exactly what was said on the line
because of all the ringing
but you know it's bad news
because the next scene
Funeral
or
Crying in a bedroom
or
Blankly staring off into space.

I used to hate those scenes in movies.
I always wondered what was said
over the phone.

But now I understand.
Because bad news hits so hard sometimes
we can't remember the exact words that were said
only the dread.

Only the dread.

I love
I am loved
I do not like
I am not liked
I feel
I am full
I cannot feel
I am empty
I am all things ever
Stardust reincarnate
I am insignificant
I am no one

I am a poet
I write
I am illiterate
In many languages

Black or white
All these things still are.

If all my loves be rivers,
then the landscape of my soul
is ancient Sumer,
a rich soil of sprawling floodland
which feeds my ambitions and my
most potent desires

If all my loves be rivers,
then You, sir, are the arterial causeway
of the whole spraying spigot.

You are the Nile, which overflows and destroys as much as it carries and creates. You are the Yhangtze. You are the Mississippi.
In the middle of your route, you become the dead sea. I feel myself floating against you.

You are all rivers.
But you are not the ONLY river.

And that is why I wonder
about possible paths that might yet
connect me back to you.

Even if you
are not
the river I choose
to paddle.

Somehow
I feel like you are the leafstem
which grows tiny veins
pushing outward on the leaf.
Every line goes back to you.

Yeah.
That's true.

River or leaf
love or not
my canoe comes back
to the love I've sought.

Your love.
You're love.

Today I realized that
shucks
is a combination
of two
very bad
words.

hmm,
long calendar.
not very many
empty
squares.
The blank ones
are like gasps
of
air
between
deeply held
breaths.

You are busy this year,
I think,
my hands lifting
page after page.
I am
peeking into
the
Void,
overcome,
but
reawakening
with every
little
white
square
moment.

It is a mess.
Planned to the day.
A buzzing swallows
all of the sound around me.
Gooseflesh arms.
Expectation battles with
doubt in the roiling furnace
of my guts.
Too much, too much.

Looking
away,
I hear pages lightly
slap
the wall.
Goodbye long calendar.

I am off to fill the spaces
in my days
the old-fashioned way.