i am the obituarist
and still am shocked when they die
a sort of dull plodding preparation
dressing the dead presents itself in memories
of you
as dead as you.
I loved you,
O, how I loved you! And you to me.

snow covers sod farms, it reminds me of purity.
Sickly i want to burn it with cobalt flame
so that i may wash my torn up hippocampus

with the rain water.
and the question i sleep to and wake up to:

i used to be like the snow
so why did i melt it for you
when i knew i would be washing your corpse with the water?

null

8/17/2014

Her name was Joy Jenny Jeffers,

known only really as Jenny.

I loved her for the way she’d sometimes

sit up in bed at four twenty three am,
the linen bunched all around her naked
 knees,


and she’d proudly and dully proclaim
to her imaginary friend
perched on the wall:

“Frankly, Frankie,
I don’t 
think this 
relationship

is going

anywhere”

I’d laugh, call her a doll

“Oh Joy Jenny Jeffers,
I love you too much,”

with a slap, call me Jenny, 

she’d plop back in the bed.

(This all happened
in the dark,
don't you remember..?)


I loved her for the way she would 
put wildflower honey
in her black coffee

and one time, hungover, she poured in
canola oil,

which she drank anyways,
Which would prompt a swift

“Oh Joy Jenny Jeffers,
I love you too much,”

as i drank my St. John’s tea

laced with Bacardi.

I loved her for the way she hated 
animals and music,

for the way she burned off a strand of
hair when curling it,

for the way she blinked when an eyelash brushed up against her iris.

I loved her for the way she said Frankly, Frankie, and I loved her the very same

when she started preforming old tricks
in front of new patrons,
when Frankly Frankie became

Frankly Johnnie or Frankly Helen,

I loved her all the same,

And in this i realised i didn’t love Joy Jenny Jeffers,

but I loved the way a certain woman 
got an eyelash out of her way,

fixed her earrings when they caught,
comforted sickly children halfheartedly,


and I loved the way a woman went about waking up at exactly four twenty three am every night or morning to say
"Frankly,
Frankie,

I don’t think this relationship

is going

anywhere.”

With the linen
all around
her knees.

10/25/2014
”darling, it’s frightening! when a poet loves he might be an unshrived god enraptured.” - Boris Pasternack

The late october sun hugs our faces with a looming brilliance.

We are propagandic youths emblazoned on a poster in orange tint.
Looking forward to our victory– our war efforts, living in pride

followed around corners and sidealleys

by a most vague sense of wrong.
and when you turned to me to look–


I realized, with a horrible feeling,
I was in a sort of strange complacent love. 
 It’s not to say i was in love –
That had happened months before when I’d refused food and drink at the Independence day celebrations

smiling at chinese invention gunpowder in the american mideastern 
sky.

But to say I was good with whatever was, albeit jaded, but i would never dream to say it.

And as we sat in the car rolling over dead leaves that were on stems months before

You asked me “Do you still like me?” 
“well,” i replied – I had just lain with you 

in a hushed affair with whispered I love you’s

how could i not like you?

Carnal wanton needs— hell of a thing.
But, I added

things were easier before that.

Now when I think i am to wait weeks until I see your face 
It seems wrong

and this poem is far too long

to just be saying that I love you
so perhaps i do not.

9/30/2014
Manhattan, new york city, new york

you got to wonder
September saturday nights
walking down church street.

the man on his smoke break
gives me a smile on the corner of 9:30
at night and i return it even though it
isn't wise because
it seems kind,
a smile i’d like to get to know better.

in the taxi
i think uninspired thoughts,
running along the sidewalk’s lining
sidewalks i’ll probably never walk on
and this is when i realize
Manhattan is a small island.

back on the train
i think that monday mornings wouldn’t
be so bad if I lived in Manhattan
crosby street or wall,
but then i think of all the
manhattan schoolkids
that seem like they know everything
and i think: do I really want to?

back in Princeton
i think that i am bored
and i realize far too much has changed
from april,
the raw essence still the same
seeping at the core of the stem, however

and i accidentally step on an ivy league
cufflink. I think to myself
i probably wouldn’t think so much
if i was in manhattan.

12/18/2014

Subartic winds howling down tunnel wind slleys
sounding a lot, you know, like us.
Smoke plums would climn up past our
cupid's bows reaching fo the reaches of dark matter
"oh don't worry about me"'s
under the sweet toffee light of the cannery
black haired boys would smile and we'd
spit back more crass
the light shining down on our columellas
and the trefoils of menthol ginger history now-
a boy would take out his lighter
and somewhere behind us in the back of town
we'd hear the ghost of a christmas Mel Torme song
on the terrace of a good cafe.