The thought of loving

Brings me to you

Who I carry in my pocket

Like a needle

*** could be joyous

Or, anticlimactic   .

See, I am  looking
for the best lay
of the land,

between two hillsides
beyond concrete, asphalt,
where

there are only
red dirt roads
few tire tracks,

a place of birdsong
gut laughter,

hard work.

If things worked out I might have
stood on an Olympic podium
holding a gold medal or

awarded a ten thousand dollar
check and a mahogany framed
certificate for winning

a Pulitzer Prize; instead, on good
days I run down alleys looking
for **** spots and comb

streets for drunks and lame
people who make for
interesting pictures.

The scent of your breath across
the horizon of my sternum

& the pull & clench beneath,
is tectonic; white birds
rise & fly, die
& descend.

I remember the days when we were two stupid kids,
we were eating blackberries grown on tombs
and the moon was just a big stone
the sun was leaving its last breath on.

Now I am looking for you on the Wood street
where you last time smiled at me,
on the Wood street where people eat with their hands
the remains  of those burned by unhappiness,
while fools sing about love and dreams and the holes in their hearts.

I am looking for you
and I don't know whether you are a human or a dream
or the ash
that slips through my frozen fingers.

Maybe you are just the hole in my soul,
maybe the moon is more than a big stone,
maybe I loved you
maybe
you are still there somewhere
in the Sun's last breath.
Maybe it's just your smile
that has burned
covering my soul
my hands.