I ask you if it’s time to leave
   our tiny place in California
   and travel up the coast
But it’s no good.
You only stare at the rolling hills
Veiled with morning fog like eager brides,
the stoic sage who tells me
which way to face when the wind
   blows through our valley.

I am your mess now
   your delicate mess
   fragile enough to break
Into five hundred and sixty
Blue butterflies every time you leave me.
It comes from a lonely dawn
An altar to the priestly sun
And from a small Mexican boy’s trumpet
   as he plays for the sea a dirge.

here, near me
there, near you
over there
where

Say something. Say anything
instead of that tell-all silence.
I know you’re there
at the other end of the phone,
thinking thoughts I’d rather you
not think at all.
If you would just speak to me,
just give me more of your quiet voice
I know I can last another day
with this sickening flood in my chest
while you plan to say
the hardest words
in the softest way
you know how.

After wondering for some time, I ask you
     ”Are you awake?”
   You say in a sudden, soft soothe
     of sheets more than you ever could
     with a dulcet rasping whisper.

We are hearts apart
   separated by bones,
     by flesh, by skin,
     by fabric, by nothingness,
by electrons that tell us we can never
   truly touch, never actually make contact-
We are untouched, disconnected,
   nothing more than merely
   very close to each other.

Yes.
Even now.

Unhappiness and discontent grow-
   are gradual and steady things-
unnoticed until a Saturday afternoon breeze
steals inside your chest and stirs
   and stirs forever like unsettled dust
in an empty house.

Love grows old after long enough;
Life starts to feel thin and strained
   spread over so many years.
They are real things and natural, and
I’d rather they change as I do
   than be the same as they were
   years before.
It would be unnatural that these things
   might resist the will of time
when nothing else has.

When you went away
      you meant to lose yourself
   searching for a soul.
When you returned
      it seemed you had done just that:
   Lost yourself somewhere far from home.
You came back with extra pieces
      and you were no longer
   the five-hundred piece Seattle skyline.
You came back more like
      a three-thousand piece Brueghel painting
   or a thirteen thousand, two hundred piece antique map, 1655.
I kept the old pieces of you
       in a box under my bed
   along with three rolls of film, several trinkets, and a stack of letters.
The box is battered now,
       dusty and falling apart.
   It reads: Seattle Skyline! 500 pieces.

delicate lonely flower,
I loved you like the sun.
broken morning revelation and
the slamming of a car door-
so began a journey of years.
empty streetlight wanderings
swollen desperation and
A search for Something
Washed upon the shores of longing
petals of a shattered imagination
glass and wax and wine-
All of it spent
Chasing ghosts of
Pretended loves.

There is Icarus
Near death in the water.
Everyone laughs and jeers
to call him a fool
And his name becomes
A symbol
of Hubris.
But none of it changes
Icarus-
nearly dead and sunburned-
Smiling
After it all
Flying around
somehow with wax.
But the stars and planets
and even the sun
Are actually very beautiful.

All the pretty birds
perched on leafy branches
chirp to the waking morning,
“I am here. Where are you?
I am here. Where are you?
I am here. Where are you?
I am here. Where are you?”

And the puppy dogs
all starve for something
While the cats of fortune
laze about the alleyways.
But the pretty birds
all the morning long,
“I am here. Where are you?”

The tardy businessmen
and their non-fat lattes
squirm in BMWs,
Honking at traffic
with the most colorful swears,
“I am here! I am here!
I am here! I am mad! I am here!”

High-octane housewives
power walk the parks,
Gabbing. And the old folks
tossing breadcrumbs to the ducks,
Mumble to long gone loved ones,
“Where are you? Where are you?
Where am I? Where are you?”

But those ****** birds-
Those pretty, ******, little birds-
They have it figured out.
They know the secrets
to Happiness:
‘I am here.
Where are you?’

If we could watch our memories fade
Like dying flowers shrivel
We could see the years be paid
And desert this empty vigil.

I’ve sat alone the restless night
In search of buried skill
But I hate most of the things I write
And lack the vital courage still.

Eventually, I need the sleep
And drag my meat to bed.
I close my eyes to count the sheep
But curse my life instead.

And though there could still be hope
I give up hoping altogether.

Suddenly you thirst for her kiss
And she sates you with lips and tongue
So you feel the warmth of her cheeks
And terror at what you've just done.

I asked you not to leave
But then you sighed
When I asked about your day
And I knew
Your bags were packed
And ready to go.

Those friends of ours
Told me I’d go after you
If I really loved you.
But when I sighed,
I knew
I’d sleep instead.