How dare you sing songs
When you don’t understand them?
And how dare you have dreams
That you never think of
And thoughts that you never plan for
And plans that you never dream about?
Where the mask ends and the skin begins
I’m not quite sure.
But have you ever felt as passionate
About anything
Or anyone,
As you do about your ******?
Have you ever put forth as much effort
Into your aspirations
As your ******?
Or is that all
There is
To you?

I built us a home
Inside a globe
And it was small
And confined
But it was ours.
Until one day you broke it
And put sunset eyes on the sea
And headed towards the horizon.
I cut my hands trying to pick up the pieces
But ended up sweeping them away
As they crumbled to dust.
So I set out the other direction
And dedicated myself to topography
Not cartography
Because there are people who own maps
And people who use them,
And I vowed to be surveyor,
And never a historian,
And I vowed to never share a map
With another lover again.

Tired modern gypsy
Hopped up on junk
And street-side bebop
That only he hears
Tells me he’ll read my palm
For a buck oh’ six
Including tax, of course.
He holds my fortune for a price.
He can see clearly
If he drinks his malt potion,
And rubs his magic ball
Behind the dumpster.
He grinds ashen hands together
And it makes the sound
Of a snake hiding
In the grass.
My hands are wet and sweating
From fear or nerves
For who am I to judge
The prophet come.
I show him my hand,
He examines it between his own.
His are covered in dirt,
And stories.
Mine are as clean and pale
As a newborn
Quietly sleeping.
His eyes are rolling
As he drags
Haggard thumb with
Cracked yellow nail
Down the lines of my hand
Muttering in tongues
Or slang
I can’t really tell.
And I reach the pinnacle of fear
That suspends time itself.
“I got bad news, missus,”
He says
And gently closes my hand
With the reaffirming squeeze
Of a mother that wasn’t mine.
“The world ain’t nothing but a giggle,
And it’s all laughing at you.”
He looks out to the sky
And with a loud guffaw
At god himself on the horizon
He slaps me on the back.
“Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry.
We all stuck here.
Even the ones walking.
We all stuck here.”
And this time I looked up at the sky too
And I laughed at god and the madman
Though I knew not which was above me
And which had just held my hand.

The words have been at the tip of my tongue
For as long as I can remember.
I saw the first sound in autumnal eyes
In the first crisp days of December.
I was a fool to search for forever
Without first stopping to consider
maybe love is meant to last a moment,
Not a day, or week, or a winter.
Nor must it be plagued by incessant need
Nor be sealed by a kiss or a ring
Nor be the sweetness the poets promised
Nor give reason for the birds to sing.

I remember
Smoking a joint
On an abandoned road
At the end of August
Reading the map wrong
And getting lost with you.
The car never worked right
After taking the wrong road.
“I thought this was a freeway.”

I remember
Leaning back
For my first
Divine and mystical tour
And passing you the wand
That would take you there.

I remember
Shaking inside
When you first put
Your hand on my leg
Because it told me
Something was going on.

I remember reaching our destination
And never stopping.

I remember
The first time you used your key
To come home to me.

I remember
Conspiring
And perspiring
On summer evenings.

I remember
Dancing with you
At one in the morning
At a run-down club
And wondering in awe
Our natural rhythm
That was better than the music
And how glad I was
That you were mine.

I remember
The first time
I looked in your
Denim eyes
And my mind quietly whispered
“That’s my best friend.”

I  remember
When I was leaving
With tears in my eyes
Was the first time
You told me you loved me.

And I wonder if I was the only one there.

Walks by when it is raining
And I don’t say a word to them.
And a ghost left his laundry
Where it shouldn’t be again.
The world wants to be my lover
When I only wanted a friend.
And everybody wants to be real
But they can only manage to pretend.

When they ask me why I loved you,
I tell them I do not know.
How could I possibly tell them
Through word or thought or prose
The way your thumb grazed
The stitches of a leather steering wheel
The way it would graze over my breast
When we woke on foggy Saturday mornings.

What words would give merit
To the way I felt
When our eyes locked across a room.
Full of people we know very well
And people I don’t know at all.

It was in the moments
Your eyes opened for the first time each day
To a new beginning
And old problems.

It was the way you ran
Your hand through your hair
When you were angry
That I was angry
That you were angry.

It was the way you’d come
Strutting up the walk way
In the evening
Where I could barely see the silhouette
Of the man who would break my heart
A thousand times.

It was the way you put your shoes on
When you left me.
It was the way you buttoned your shirt
Before she would button it down.

I can’t tell them why I loved you.
They would never understand.