12/27/2019

this emptiness
in my ventricles
could fill a room

and there is not
much else
that i can say.

1/8/2019

an argument down below
i get up,
gaze down

from the 16th floor
black sheet over window,
punctuated by this:

orange and white
the concrete of the street
i hear voices

they feel something
i can't find them
i hear them rising with passion

all i can
think is
i agree.

i sit back down
stare at the wall
remember where i am

i
keep
forgetting

11/22/2018

the leaves underfoot
i'm here to hear
while i walk in battery park

the river sways, partial to the quay
where moss covered rocks
and gum wrappers lay

and i liken it to my brain,
how it moves between
garbage and rot,

things that have stuck to me
through nature
and time.

i entertain the idea
of jumping into the hudson
shake my head. that'll have to wait for another day

but why?
that i cannot answer.
why the delay?

as i sit and stay and do nothing
hoping it'll get better
it never does

i shake my head
and turn
and walk away

things that happened to me
that seemed so full of eternity
and set in green and granite

things i figured i'd never forget.
The city distracts me but
i go back to dry land



everywhere i find evidence of my memories:
people, places, streets, trees,
the laces they took from me at the hospital

i cannot find them-
they lie in a bin,
in a landfill, deep in the ground under the rot

but these memories-
i cannot find it-
the idea they happened to me



i am finding ground
and lying on it
but falling through to the core.

forgetting what it is like
to feel air on my face
to feel my chest when i cannot recall

the feel of anything
or anyone at
all.

the few days i do remember
are vignettes of a film,
stored away in archives and
exploding in a kiln

the other ones run from me in a tunnel
towards green orange and gold days
of leaves, and air, and trees and hay

to lock me out forever
to send themselves away
from me.

to forget my memories  
it's like a sickle wedged into my heart,
handle out towards the hand of time that sunk it there

who did it happen to,
and when, and where and why
I don’t know

purple vermillion skies
in October, the turnpike pulsing under me
flying past on an over pass.

Now a year later I lie
in cold sepulcher of room,
wooden smell and dark purple night

I can finally see the stars
but they do nothing for me
except to remind me


they were there this whole time
and remember more than i could ever
dream of.

The dew drops off the brown brick still
I am not there to watch it
Back home everything stops
It is hard to imagine my life without me
In the gray city, I lie in bed
For what reason?
Why am I here
As the rain comes down
And washes the garbage away.

7/19/2017

"I did, and it broke my heart- into a billion pieces but I had to. I had to."
"He held up his head with his hand, steadily observing her. He turned to his side fully. She could no longer see his face.
'you don't understand,' he said finally
'i've always been afraid of being an egoist'"
"'I've a couple idee fixes'
'not any i need to know'"
"i'm sick with the idea... sick with it.*"

2017*

I hear the first mourning doves of the year
somewhere high in the branches of this toohot day
like your calling me then going away

You are sick, sick
your head implodes with the fetid treacle
of thought.

and i have done what i could
this is:
nothing.

i will marry one day and be happy
fat and glowing, tenderhearted
i will send you a letter

perhaps you will know
if you want to know
but for me this year is this

the talking too much
and hating the
taste of cherries

the last blue nights by the fountain have passed
there are scarcely poems to write.
a plane flies high in the sky

white and dry
to jump from it,
broken parachute

and land at your feet, liquified
is a fate of which i
can only fantasize.

4/18/2018

the waxwings singing
through my window
remind me of when i was young.

letting bygones be bygones and
staring boldly out the doorway at the
morning sun

but who am i anymore
if i cannot be that girl
i don't know, i don't know

to sleep's to dream
and to love's to keep
April– the canopies turn white and green

ND
1944-2018*

You taught me how to write
it took me too long to write this.

When you died,
the nurses combed your hair

and put your favorite perfume on
your neck.

without you I am nothing
and a ceaseless
mess

but for you
have kept
living

in 1967 you had a daughter,
born dead.

you never visited her
grave  you didn't want to know where it was

but your husband did.
and the first person he told about you was her.

she was born with
lemon yellow curls stuck to her head.

the pain is so much
but not as much as your beauty

i will learn to live without you  as
you would have wanted it

racing matchsticks down storm gutters
i still don't believe in god.

But if there is a hell
that means there is a heaven

I would take eternity of
darkness and iron hot
pokers

if it meant you could be
with your lost daughter
and hold her.

1/18/2018

i used to be sentimental,
i declare like some sort of achievement
like it is something to be proud of

that i feel nothing
nowadays.
and i do, i think

but i have always been told
my writing is analytical
corpse cold, to the point

the car's quiet in the night
and, moving to the corner
and crossing my arms

i entertain the notion of what've i done
but life doesn't mean anything
and that's the good part

i laugh but I'm not smiling
as you confirm this idea
the fields are

evil and dark
but how do i explain
i can't it's not like i have ever felt it before

with a smirk
i
play with my hair

and remember
what being a woman's
good for.

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.

11/28/2017
"I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move."
the thoughtfox

The sun set on us
there was nothing I could do.

We talk of
Ted Hughes and the thought-fox.
you say I will be a good anthropologist

i don't want to travel if it's without you,
I learn this:
Plath bit Hughes when they met

for some reason, I thought it was relevant  to us.
it is the last time we meet.

You are reminded that I disgust you
and say it has to end.
Earlier you said

"I feel like I am your Ted Hughes."
and I reply:
"He killed his wife."

11/28/2017

Grinning,
but who's to say I'm supposed to bear it?
dreaming of being loved and

tops of parking garages
where I will make my Olympic dive
perfect form, perfect form!

perhaps I'll make a show out of the whole
thing
the rigamarole of my rigor mortis

i wake up at four am and
think oh my ****,
life is a nightmare

you told me your self it wasn't fair
but you made those rules
and stuck to them


i will grow to hate your countenance
eventually and soon
when i rot and bloat in my grave.

11/4/2017

third floor balcony the highest it goes
we stood– he said earlier
the top staircase is good luck

just her and i smiling leaning on railing
talking about everything:
who gives a **** but we did and we do

the night was brand new- sitting
joking the apartment was an ***** den
smoking your lucky cigarette, you paused

and i thought is this the best we're ever gonna get?
you hand it back to me,
i breathe remember last time i was here

we walk back in,
they laugh and talk about how they're out
of beer

she asks if i want my makeup done
and how the others will be here soon
i can only think of the dead leaves

i saw on the courtyard from the stairs
and wonder which one fell
first.

10/17/2017

it's not real.
not here.
not yet.

driving past the
streets i've grown to memorize
clapboard and craftsmen, american

summers drifting over me like haze
and all the memories that ensnare me
all i know is the past and that scares me

i am
thinking of exurban new jersey and thinking of
last week,

the lights across the Delaware river at midnight
reflected perfectly
but not quite,

orange red and white oil slick in the black of the water,
the lights of cars creeping across occasionally.
i burn a cigarette out, toss it into the water szzz

ah, god, you say, looking up from your stoop
i love that sound,
i recall i used to burn them out

on my hands because i did not feel them
and for a while there is nothing say. you look back down again
and it is quiet.

but look, i stand up, almost yell,
almost wading into the cold October water
and

maddening with interest by the second.
is that a light i see, in the water?
a glance towards you

again you look up,
now leaning to the side
the faintest glimmer,

you conclude.
i wonder, out loud, what is it.
you tell me it is hard to be like us.

i ask, what's us?
eyes still on the water.
oh, well, you know.

then i understood.
striking a match again
and pacing round the riverbank

i throw stones now,
smooth ones and rough ones,
each making a different sound as they hit the water

trying to hit the glimmer
then stopping, wondering why?
i sit back down, chastising myself for my inability to relax

you listen to my heart
oh its fast
tap my thigh as you hear it, head on chest

dundundundun
i laugh because my heart's gonna **** me one day
just like it did my grandmother's father

and so on
and so forth.
driving back,

on the bridge,
i shake my head.
point at the darkened spot

hey, thats where we were earlier
i don't tell you this, but i look for the shine in the water.
i don't find it.

9/16/2017

i sat on the corner
and stared
until you woke up

in the car, later,
the sun dipping under
the trees

and painting the air
dark blue
i remembered the vermillion summer sun

frowned deeply, for some reason
i didn't say anything
you looked at me and smiled

i had to, too.
we sat by the woods
the car quiet and still

two hunters came out of the woods
and later, back out:
empty handed.

i looked over your side and over the seat:
saw your blue reflection, the moonlight sheer

and
objects seen in mirror
are closer than they appear

9/2/2017

Now johnny hartman
using the same excuse i do:
i just dropped by to say hello

oh but how destructive
a few words could
be!

two and a half at night
god should i be asleep?
should i drive into oblivion?

i'd like to disappear into the mountain
driving, turning into a ravine, melting into the night's rocky tiers

god
id rather be anywhere
but here:

East Maryland, or Narrangansett
you know, whatever it is i  want
i'm not sure this place has it

9/2/2017

my last september–
in princeton, that is
the late night talks

soon to be replaced
by the real business.
two am

i sit on hard floor!
phillip green and his orchestra
softly in my room's air

watching the door, weaving,
like penelope, my memories–
almost tangible.

i raise a finger follow the light
from the lamp, think:  

god!

someone should write a book about us

they  already have:
the beautiful
and the ******.

8/9/2017

the heat doesn't stop for anyone.
i learned this three- is it three now-
years ago,

the weeds crawling up my sticky ankles
laughing with the windows rolled down
years later, the smog hits my face

and i roll up the escalator,
now used to the sight of 34th street
hitting me in the face

head on like the freight trains
i used to graffiti-
i  used to contemplate jumping in front of

my life here is a terminal one
my days in my childhood home numbered
a new life filled with grey and steel

approaches me
and i do not flinch, i do not cower
nor do i tremble in anticipation

i simply wait
like i used to in the train tracks long ago
oh, but i always changed my mind then.

7/15/2017

A plank of wood,
sand mites bite our ankles
my ankles

One in the morning at the
Gated Beach Community
and the signs said

Without parental supervision,
No one under 16 allowed
but there I was, 15

Dealing with a bad lease on my brain, don't forget yours, too
parents nowhere to be found

Or maybe two buildings over
Years later, it's night
I step over puddles, drunk boys

Walk around the complex laughing
Trying to remember when I found that sort of thing fun,

Remembering never,
I sit on a ledge--
And you'd never guess the sea

Was several hundred feet away
with the way the sky bleeds black
congealing, together

The Atlantic and it.
Remembering my old obsession
With blood, my old poems

Speaking feverishly of it
adding meaningless symbols-
the flower the color of it,

or the sky in the morning in august
trying, selfishly, to make sense of my life.

I wish to run a fever-- forget this place ever existed
Or you, truthfully.

5/26/2017

I search desperately for it:
the drive to write.
It can be found in my inability to stay satisfied

The visits- never too numerous
one call I'm thrown off
oh, it would be great to see each other

I stare off and agree.
i dislike driving
because i see all the dead animals

on the road
one call from you
still no response. still no response

4/13/2017

spring sprung like a coil
forcing itself, tugging on the city's dress
and the flowers, rabid

the mixed old cement steps
of the apartment building where i sit
tinny song in the air saying

oh, i'm just a kid
oh, i'm no longer a kid
dead on arrival, letting myself go

the city's mine now
well, at least any point below 4th street
and city hall

i am no longer suffering
i am simply waiting
the argument could be made:

what's the
difference?
that, i don't know.

3/29/2017

steaming july days,
screaming at me that I certainly did not know
what I got myself into

i couldve slashed my throat and
bled onto the connn-creete
and it wouldve boiled

no, you dont understand
no, you dont understand
no you dont understand

you understand? no, dont
you dont understand, no
dont you understand? no?

no...you'll never understand.
twisting our car-seat conversation
back and forth like a rivet

you were right
i didnt understand and i never did, an ingenue
you see back then

i was young for my old age
and old for my young age
who are you now

youve grown your hair out
and youre as woman as me?
a better photographer, too

but youre odd and always will be
i didnt know the indications of looove
i was what i was:

just a
little
girl.

3/29/2017

Time divides us like state lines
coming together,
apart again

After all
the mismatch words
and my would not, could nots

Simmering, cooling
into stability
My past now

Agrees with all the books i read
i am not tortured,
i was

I have said before
that year, you didn't think of me
But i believe you did here is the problem:

Better to not be thought of
than cursed but
maybe they were secular thoughts

Don't you think and
there was an incident at the
canal street station today

Suicide- i was running late i didn't catch the 6:40 train
maybe it is better i did not.
as i got to the platform, hot-to-trot

"They did a good job cleaning
it up," i looked down sick to my stomach
vertigo rising in my chest, ailing at the fact that was my first thought.

2/26/2017

Prince Street, NYC

the bright white heaven of a
terrace chair
you touched my shoulder, you thought

i cringed
a longer pause—— i didnt
i tried to freeze the spring

in its tracks and dead as a doorknob
stopped decomposed and quiet forever
the summer then swelled

to a crescendo
i sweated out what was left of my
humanity in battery park city

my art used to be found in suffering
and yet i wrote no poetry that week on
wall street

there is no nobility in this,
the suffering art
i mean.

Anne sexton: I never seemed to like the
spring for what it was but for what it could've been.

Princetonian fields, mausoleums
foreign to me, a brief reintroduction in
January only to be murdered again

How tragic, this
did the Witherspoon spring
the Nassau nights

mean nothing?
I revel in the past's
futility

2/2/2017

to vivisect the reader,
to bleed all over my paper
the one great poem i wish to write one day.

dead plath would be happy
my life with you a fat diseased rat.
for once, i think about what i write

taking slow breaths and thinking about meanings
there is something i am trying to say and i do not
know how to

clawing inside of me
an incubus's baby, what is it?
only dead saints know

but here's the thing,
and it is:
i did this to myself

i don't know what an apostrophe is
but i would if i saw it.
my past is full of ulcers and

the cold February cuts into me
it is my butcher
i have been that girl

2/2/2017

your look, i saw, i aimed for a reply
i couldn't find one and looked
at the ground

i went to see my friend
i tried, the windows were
dark

hello she called and opened the door
she never keeps the lights on
there are things in life you just cant predict

and i sit in my room during the winter
and i hate to use contractions in my poems
i wont i promised myself again, but here i am and here ive been

i tend to stay in my room , dont move a muscle
or a tendon that is
while the lights get lower

all its missing is the smoke of the lounge
and i very much miss cigarettes
the ones i rolled for myself almost a month ago

i know i will grow to love them though
so i
dont

1/25/2017

the sky melted, sweating glass
for three days straight-
once, we marveled at the inexorable and eventual

at
the drop that makes the bough
bow.

i remember the ache
of the sunlight on my
crooked nape

one May day . We sit in a January cafe
"It is springtime," she announces
except these days, it's no emotional pantomime, not a hopeless mantra

"and why?" I beg a question
"oh, because something's starting"
she mixes milk into her honey

it is too sweet for me
the umbrella opens in the shop
"put that away, it's a bad omen" oh, as if I care

imagine me so treacly?
she talks about pregnancy and politics
about marriage

and something in me,
i realize
wants to be, is disgusted by my far future maternity

at the supermarket
there's a jingle
hey, mom, what's for dinner?

"Uh, hey, I feel like Plath... marriage is oppression and all that"
"Well, join the club. Oh, domesticity-"
"O'Hara said : There is only one man I like to kiss,"

I misquote, intentionally.
"Heterosexuality!
you are inexorably approaching!"

perhaps we can't wait
to be thirty and bored
with three kids

watching them play at the Minetta
wondering where the hell our time went
and there they'll sit

polish- to her irish, italian- to my puerto rican
new jersey mutts
i laugh

thinking of drunk days down on
53rd and Lex
we're not ready to live like it's 1953

*oh, johnny promised me
and i wear his
ring

1/14/2017

one in the morning, champagne drunk
KNL INW and I
steered uneasily down the sidewalks
of an uppereast side street,

the January wind whipping us
into a frenzy
smoking rolled cigarettes
a homeless man stops us:

asks for food
she gives him a cigarette
lights it for him
looking back, this was not good

a drunk bougie boy out of many
says "it's alright sweetheart!" as he passes us on the sidewalk. we complain of exhaustion

it is quiet.
i will move here next year
i pause.
I think, stop

and we laugh
and wonder if it's really happening
and i think my poetry is uninspired
and frankly, ugly

my state does not settle in
i almost step on a puddle
i say where am i? the answer:
realization enough to strike me sober

"said my muse to me,
'look in thy heart and write.'"
-Philip Sidney

1
"i have a song to show you," i said in the late morning
but did not play it until eleven that night.
your eyes seemed blue when i met you
i realized they are green or maybe temperamental.
as the train swept past the neighborhoods and the forests
in between them
and the white delicate soot of the snow lifted in the air
for a second, or two or three
one couldn't see anything from the window
on one side, this
on the other, you
one ethereal
the other, just frozen rain

2
in the museum,
the serious straight lines of malevich stared me down
i walked towards the other side of the room
when i turned around, the back of your head
ash blonde and head tilted
i looked at the art, then the floor, then the white walls
you looking at your favorite painting
you implied it was an honor and
i touched your shoulder
and called you the prettiest thing here.
you smiled. it was just the truth.
i said i would see my favorite painting
but i don't know where it is
you told me, with a laugh,
you did not mind traveling
i later found out
Portrait of Maude Abrantes*
is in Haifa.

3
"where do we go?" you asked.
"good question. i don't know,"
figure out for yourself what i meant.
The subways were all closed
and only the 7 was running
who gives a **** about the 7? i'd always said
guess the joke was on me.
walking to the station, whichever one we could find
i looked up at you with snow dusted hair
and frostbitten hands
feeling something i hadn't felt in years
"let's hop on a train and get off wherever"
it took 15 minutes
but the D train rolled in
and up to 59th we went,
then the E down to west 14th.
We laughed at the incompetency of bureaucracy
and hopped from the train onto the platform,
watching the gap as we did.

4
there,
on west 14th
the Chelsea streets were wordless,
sleeping in on a saturday night
we walked past snowed in cars and i laughed at the
ridiculousness of it all
this is how badly i'd wanted to go to the city with you!
but i didn't mind
i walked a bit ahead
turned around
the beaux arts townhouses
on either side of us
strategically planned trees
and a pair of lost gloves
it was so quiet i couldn't hear my thoughts
just my heart's rhythm
in the station that night
you had told me you wished i had a place in brooklyn to go back to
"yeah, if we could even find a train that went there," i laughed.

on the train with grant
its cold
its white
sterility                              ok

ok   you cant hear anything when it snows
        and it isnt as cold

i cant see nyc but i looked for it

                   ok
i wanna quit and cry full time

i dont know x79,345  
                                i dont like when people  
                                   watch me write
it looks like its cold but
it (?) why                                     that was a test. i dont care
isnt cold                         ok

it is cloudless ok they laughed kind of
ok
im dumb it snowed we have two hours

i have to finish my story about rich people

ok oooooook

I stumbled into the sun
I didn't know what I was looking at

--

I wrote this in November and was not happy with it;
"
I heard passion on the streets of New York City
the sea foam of the sky hanging on the Persian shield watching over us
the gloaming brings retrospect
the healthy green pendant of the six train matches the bushes in the square
in Little Ukraine
it is dark
we bounce as we step
I know when I move I will
be on my own
she tells me she hears yelling. is it happy exclamation or anger
I don't know. I say. I don't know"

12/25/2016

On the sidestreets of Little Ukraine
men smoked cigarettes and said *pryvit
and KNL said it's because you look slavic

but i'm pennsylvania dutch! i laugh
shoofly pie, not sochniki
off the 33rd street stop

and it was getting to be dark out
the sky heliotrope and true blue
I heard a noise

did you hear that too? I say to her
It was angry or happy? she asks, more like states
I don't know, all i said.

*But it's passion.
It's passion.
On the streets of new york city. That would make a good poem, right?

12/25/2016

i remember how she'd
noticed my eyes wavering
and wandering along the grey sidewalk

watching shoes go by from
the basement window
they seemed sentinent

she asked
what are you thinking about and why
after all you are my best friend

i know you better than any man you meet
i took a deep breath. "why do things go away?"
i had barely touched the jasmine tea.

she poured me
a cup
"you think too much,"

12/24/2016
to G.G.
"When the sons of Princeton
Gather anywhere,
There’s a place they think of,
Longing to be there.
It’s the one and only
University,
Situated and celebrated
In New Jersey
-Traditional Princetonian song, "Going Back to Nassau Hall"


You worried I
wouldn't contact you again
I laughed because it was funny.

I'd told you
my favorite beach boys song
was That's Not Me

He moves to the city and regrets it
I guess maybe the feeling of being in
over my head prevailed in my life.

Speaking of which–
we sat in the deserted
Prospect Garden

where Fitzgerald did once
And it was donated in 1879
people wrote of it:

"Its grounds, like eden"
I wondered if this was ephemeral
looked hard for the temptation.

I didn't see any fruit trees.
I stared straight ahead on the bench
into the piercing dark

English Yew
behind us
and the red gravel.

I said:
"I can't use thin spoons"
I didn't look at you when I did.

"When you say that,"
A pointedly deep breath
I turn to you.

You continue: "I feel like I love you."
I laughed, not because
it was funny

But I laughed in its simplest form-
Is it not an expression of human happiness?

You told me that you
didn't know why
I seemed to

Dislike the things
that made me great
I laughed because it was funny

And turned to kiss you
you were the first person to ever say
I was "absolutely" beautiful

What do you say to that? I
smiled and
tried to not look

At you in a way that
betrayed to you the feelings
I was trying so very hard to conceal–

they said this:
That I was starting to feel the affects
of a very deep fondness.

As time passes
my poetry, more
succinct.

i fear i am losing it
but does it
matter?

we'd talked about vanitas.
it was hard to say goodbye
and i

turned to you as you walked away
focused on the way you walk
watched you become smaller

and went out to the car.
in front of nassau hall
and i

thought of the next time.

overpoured
emotions carried
along unpredictable courses.

then left memories.
the two
were compatible

*"O Lord, thou givest and at thy pleasure takest away."