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.

The problem with hedgehogs is the universal one.
It's the struggle of every man lying on his back, staring at the stars,
of every woman from mars, trying to appear from venus.
It's the distance between two lovers,
and the pain of the sulking man on the bus.
The problem with the hedgehog is the problem with us.
The binding of every heart that's too large for its chest,
and the worry of the mother who can't rest because her child has not come home.
It's that we feel like we are alone when surrounded by our friends,
and that the feeling of love ends when you hang up the phone.
The problem with hedgehogs is that when times get cold and rough
they can't seem to get warm and soft enough to love.
It's the push you're always giving to keep her away,
and the words you can't find to get him to stay the night.
It's the constant fights that wear you down every day.
It's the talent wasted in pursuit of pretty words
that won't be heard by the ones we care for most,
and the ghosts in the rain of yesterday, that won't leave us be.
The problem with hedgehogs is the problem with me.

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.

I made my way through the door, through the garden, out onto the street, and into the universe, where I saw all of the marvels this life has to offer.

Walked on sunny beaches where the sea-breeze always blows, and in quiet meadows where carnations always grow.

Danced upon the milky glances of a waning moon, wrapped myself in the dawning sun’s embrace, watched the Earth until the quiet afternoon.

Laid for countless nights with girls I know I loved too much, and spent hours peering into mirrors, with reflections anxious fingers long to touch.

Sighed in places where joints were worn frictionless by years of bliss, and one soul found another in the press of a lover’s kiss.

Wept in lonely places where people walk with heavy feet; the saddest places where two loving hands may never meet.

Learned in places where the answer and the question were one and the same; where knowledge shines, and the deepest problem is but a game.

Whispered in the ear that first heard the songbird sing, and picked flowers in the grove where ground was first touched with spring.

Spent a millennium worth of carefree strolls in the places where the thunder rolls, and beheld the hand that carefully forks the lightning.

Saw things no other man has ever seen, all at once beautiful and frightening, where the bell of eternity tolls.

Painted in galleries where no beautiful thing is taboo, and where every sorrow is a burden shared by two.

And I returned.

Returned because I remembered you.

I'm up at 5 a.m., and it's cold in the basement again despite the new summer heat. I am quiet.
You know, every morning, I choose a face. It doesn't matter which one I choose, it doesn't matter what place I have to go. It only matters that I have to constantly know that I have it on, and that however long I have to wear it, I'll be able to bear it because that is what's required of me.
I say, "This is today's face...the one that everyone will see." "Today's face is funny." or "Today's face is sad." or "Today's face says '*******' to everyone I pass."
Now, about the other day...just the way you said you hate it when I'm quiet.
I should tell you that I love you most when I'm quiet. Even though I know it bothers you, and I know you'll never buy it, It's the truth.
Because, though I've been doing it for a long time, and it's nothing new, putting on these faces often gets old.
So, even though I know it's 5 a.m. and it's cold,  I think I may need to stand up and be bold and demand that you accept me as I am, without any stipulations or a contingency plan, and without any reservations.
I want today's face to be me. I want it to be the face that you see when I am quiet, and at peace. The face you see when I am able to laugh as a child would. The one you see when I smile and kiss you, or when I crack into a good book, or ride a roller coaster.
As you and I get closer and closer I think it's more than fair that we should share who we really are with each other.
As we get to know one another, we become a part of something special that will be good for us both.
So think it out. Even though you have your doubts, you should think about it, and we should try it.
I'm willing if you are, and more than ready...If you can love me when I'm quiet.

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.

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?

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.

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.

You are not blind to the fact that you have not been lucky. I can see it too, and what the world has done to you is not kind. Salt rivers have flowed in origin from you, used your burning cheeks as banks, and surged away without a word of thanks.

Do not shrink back, because your eyes that have cried rivers have also seen ten-thousand sights on a thousand different nights and been unafraid, and when they were, your heart was brave enough for them both.

Some part of you has always known that your beauty would not simply emerge by chance; that it would have to lie under the mountain that’s on your mind, crushed into the gem that some newly lucky person will inevitably find.

.

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 am ready, love, for you and all that you mean.
When I touch your skin do not expect me to quake,
and know that your kiss will not leave me unarmed or unnerved.
You are better served by a steady hand, and confident lips,
and the gentle curve of your hip will only make me sure.

I am ready, love, for all that you should require.
Do not fear that the fire of your gaze will scorch me,
or that I will wilt and wither under your hand.
I will not pale, as I hear men have, beside your charm.
It can do me no harm to love you more.