1/17/2018

"the going into winter and never coming out."
-frank o'hara

the lights of nassau
***** and white
like raw pearl

shining down on my shoes
and
i, moldering and wicked,

sitting on bank steps.
you held your hand out for me
but i stood up by myself

this is how it happened
simply put, and no
metaphor.

you say to sit and talk
i know where talking is
red gravel i kick up like i had

before
and all i see in the cold and the dark:
your pupils, your hands

held out again
i would be dumb to take them
a month ago, dying for a lack of you

and now i try to catch time by its tail
but i can't
for time isn't an animal

it could have fooled me,
by the way it slinks and sidles
in the dark of the woods.

sitting in Anacostia,
on the phone with you,
dead roach on sidewalk

so long ago
back to reality:
you ask me if it's alright

and i say yes
i let anything happen to me
and everything happens to me.

i can not hold on to it
time is in the air
but what i can try to do is remember it.

*II*
my life is lived in the past
a life not worth living
a life not respected

there is nothing
i can do about this
i think, as i walk to my car.

1/3/2018

Paling to think
think what?
oh, just to think!

It hurts,
but
it helps

Time escapes me
there is nothing to do about it
papermoths and gnats of memories

And i'm not sure i dislike it.
*** and orange juice,
laying on the cold floor

Laughing about myself
and what not.
everyone laughing

Because we've made it
another trip round the sun
excited because

I've picked up a new habit:
never sleeping!
sickening, the state of my writing-

Sickening, the state of the night
it is so beautiful, so cold
bruised blue-and-black all over

So that i want to watch it forever
the light hitting my shoulders
and hands

Holding them
up to
the window

"Twist. I always get chocolate twist." I smiled down at the cup. Sunny day in south north central new jersey. Good day for custard. Good day to die. Good day for anything, really.
"Of course,"
"You say that a lot."
"Because I concur with you, a lot?"
"Hem. Hm. Ha" A low hum and then a laugh.

   A lot can change. It has. In fact so much had changed I could hardly keep track. The days followed each other closely with vague hints of urgency- I did not know why, figured that was for later. This was a change- both things. Things had never seemed to carry much weight and for the first time in years I was really just content with seeing things play out.
Peter Yorke and his orchestra played in the car ride home. "Love, here is my heart." OH, If only it were that easy. A simple offering, or presentation.  The sun beat down relentless. Earth was dying and all the great works of art anything that was ever to be made had been accounted for and done.

12/7/2017

The month was over
heart in my hands
pulsing, bleeding

crawling down and off my
fingers
ruby, garnet

all over
the muddy riverbank.
the summer night's air-

still, holding.
it was unknown,
so were you

remembering the
look you gave me
as i walked away

you thought i didn't see
days turned into weeks
soon enough

like always, of course
and again
i watched you walk away

forever and ever.
you did not look back like I did.
I did not expect you to.

December I sit on the top of the slide, looking at
playground monkey bars

I laughed when
you hopped on
looking at the brook we

flung cigarettes at.
I wonder why no one has killed me yet in life

With something as simple
as- placed firmly in
my liver- a knife.

the biting air freezing
the tips and tops
of my fingers

the lights of the cars
pass over my head in lines, through metal slats

thinking of you:
a brick to my face,
to my brain, please.

so I can start over,
comatose, new and
unknown to the world.

In three weeks
New Years
will come

you will laugh with your friends miles away
i, sick sad abandoned

will frown deeply
at the television
and make myself empty promises

that
others will
break for me eventually.

11/28/2017

"Desire and
All the sweet pulsing aches
And gentle hurtings
That were you,
Are gone into the sullen dark..."
Ernest Hemingway

Pain
because the sky is darkening
and turning bruise blue.

I glance out the window
look for some kind of answer
and nothing comes to me.

11/29/2017
"
I
...Bitter rain by the mouthful...

II
More hands on the terrible rough...
The whole thing turns
On earth, throwing off a dark
Flood of four ways
Of being here, blind and bending...
A final form
And color at last comes out
Of you- alone- putting it all
Together like nothing
Here like almighty

III
Glory.""
James Dickey


October is here and
you are not dead yet.
the room is always hot-

every room is always hot.
at least to me,
a month later

a fever takes my brain in its hands
my body trying to fight something
this is a delayed reaction to

your blistering lies to me as the
sun set and cast
ochre glisters

that only autumn can create.
i fear the winter
and its pallidness

and i fear the delaware river
looking at it too long
and perhaps discovering the truth

whatever that may be.
it did not happen
this did not happen.

October
and you are
not dead yet.

November
and neither am
i.

when you said you
were proud of me
my confusion grew.

proud of eternally ******* up
and looking at you
when you needed me to speak?

the words I have used today
have not done this or you
justice.

no, not at all.
days stretch on
and nothing happens.

time is the biggest thief
and the biggest trick
known to humanity.

one day the light was shining on us
the same shade of ocher crawling in through slats.
i stood up and closed the blinds.

i would always ask you to guess
guess what?
only to say something quite obvious.

guess what
october is gone
and you are dead.