As I drove home, I thought: we should all bless the darkness.
If mercy, in her cold rain, should slide us off of the road, then all that we owe and have owed can be erased.

(Sometimes you'll remember nothing but a face. Sometimes both life and war are waste.)

But when we pray we seek not simply to use our voices.
We give our venerations now with wine-stained lips and teeth.

(Someone will remember you, and someone will remember me.)

As we raise our mortal pleas we hope to be like candles.

(A candle is never diminished in lighting another candle.)

We press our hands and knees and backs against the darkness, and for the darkness we perfect our brightest smiles.
As we skid we know the car will handle, so long as candles continue lighting candles.

On this cold reclining chair;
On this white paper sheet
With its sterile static-cling
I wonder:
Could they bring forth
Enough of me, and of us,
To send some other man,
In some other world,
What we were and what we had?
Could I bleed my love into a bag?

I think of you when I am drunk.

When my synapses and veins are giving up every bit of their chemical snap, I think of you.

Whoever you may be, you've already drawn so many things from me that it's a shame we've never met.

It'll take a poem to tell you that, so maybe a poem isn't so different from a prayer.

I think of you when I'm sitting in my shirt-sleeves blowing smoke and all alone. All it takes is one good poem to make me feel like nothing's gone amiss, so when I go out on a limb I don't feel it shake because I know I can get used to this. I watch my smoke billow off into the sky and I know my words will take me there, to wherever it is you are, so maybe a poem isn't so different from a prayer.

When I close my eyes and squeeze my hope out into the night air I see signs that swivel backward and forward along magnificent and shifting lines.

What's written in the leaf and the brick, the brilliant smiling faces, is the language of the divine, calling back at me in the voice of whatever god has made me. It only knows one lovely language, and it's be talking lately about how the cicada shrills in summer, or just how that same smell sticks to the rain age after age.

So when I open up my Facebook page and it tells me  there are new stories I know just how true that is.

That in all of this business, whatever it may be about, there might be out there somewhere a final chance, but you haven't reached it yet, so keep shooting.

Maybe a poem is not so different from a prayer.

I.
I'm writing to tell you that I've spoken with your sister.

She tells me everything these days, though recently I've marked the way her voice conceals a quiet shame; rage in casual tones, and fear in quiet whispers.

I haven't kissed her in quite some time.
She's thinking of you.

II.
I'm sorry that I haven't written sooner. This fasting saps volition from my fingers, and the hot smell of ozone still lingers in the air.

But everywhere I see you on the news.

Has Ramadan been hard for you this year? I'm looking forward to hearing from you. I want to know that you are near once more. Please write.

III.
I saw an action flick today, and something of you in the way the heroine roared and flipped her hair just before letting a rocket fly.

I thought that I would die of suspense until the moment when the hero rose from the rubble to stand above his foes.

Crows circled. Credits rolled.

IV.
Thunder tolls. The atmosphere crackles and bursts. It's early yet, and not even my worst. My warring hands will never give you peace. An endless war-song issues from my lips.

You are not brave enough, dear girl, to resist destruction by my hand. The bomb blessed by my lips is indifferent, darling boy.

I will consume the gardens planted with your seeds.

V.
Bismillah, arrahman, arraheem.

VI.
Blessed is he who cries out for peace.
The Lord sees him and sees that he is good.

Blessed is she who dines before the sunrise and loses her life at noon, still clad in vestments of her childhood.

VII.
Eid Mubarak, and peace be with you every year. I've yet to hear from you.

I saw your sister again today. Whatever tinged her voice still holds her.

She said she hasn't written.

It matters who writes, so write a love-letter, I told her.

She's thinking of you.

It is still summer for a while yet,
But home is seeming less and less like home.

By now, the bed is empty. By now the cupboards are empty. By now every room and every corner is empty. But what bothers me is that broken screen door.

It is still summer for a while yet, and that door just keeps swinging, waiting to close, but everybody who passes knows it won't. Everybody knows but me. Everybody sees.

It reminds me of the time you fell and skinned your knee, and we had to wash it in the tub. Or the time when the paper boy kept throwing the news into the sprinkler.

And I remember falling in love in this house. And I remember that in the end our hearts were broken, just like that swinging screen door.

I remember you and your skinned knee.

That a sincere part of me is not enough is evidence that I was unfair. You deserved the whole. The most that I share.

But by now the bed is empty. By now all of the cupboards are empty. By now every room and every corner and every ****** bit of this house is empty. And what bothers me is that broken screen door.

It's still summer for a while yet, and that door keeps swinging, waiting for you to come back home.

The gravel of the driveway shifts under my shoes
While I lift my eyes to the horizen, like the evening before.
The sunset never waits for me, but I pretend it will.
I've always been a dreamer, but that's not news.

Not of any consequence. A pipe dream.

The night will come when it will come.
I guess I'll get used to that someday,
but for now the sun is sinking over the potomac.
It scares me how the shade can make me numb.

Hold on to the light. Catch the very last beam.

With the passing of day, night steals in.
Suddenly, every ghost on every corner is you.
Whenever a shadow falls across the street it's you.
I try to call out, but don't know where to begin.

I can smell you in the rain. A pipe dream.

But there is nothing on the street for me to find.
No eyes, no hair, no smile or warm touch.
In fact, there's nothing much to be seen at all.
I breathe in deep; the victory of a calm mind.

The sun sets over the potomac. Catch the very last beam.

I remember that it was snowing
and I was falling in love.
Her name was still Paige then, I think.
Yes. Raking my fingers through the ash that's left
I find her.
A sooty inconsistency among the stones.
From the cinders I re-assemble a skeleton of hallowed bones and
Here's Paige, standing in the front door, tip-toeing back to me.
As though from a dead sleep, her voice rises in a lazy plea.
"No" slips the empty voice from my tongue. "You cannot love this lifeless thing"
And I trust him. I trust myself.
A moment passes, and her name is Regina by now, surely.
And what we are is absolutely nothing that we seem to be.
What is this black thing that moves and dances in my hand?
"No" again. A voice exhausted and parched.
"What do you hope to find while digging through the sand?"
And I find that the answer is...that I never really knew.
As I let her fall I realize that these fingers have not changed.
They have burned and blown these ashes to glass.
Whatever else she may be...
Whoever else she may be...
She is is my girl of glass, forever transparent.
A delicate frame, built up and unfulfilled, but never ungrieved.
I pick her up.
I place her on my shelf.
I lie down.
I fall asleep, dreaming only of her.