I ask into the air,
I ask, and I ask,
and it comforts me to ask,
questions floating above me,
swimming around me,
like an early summer's
dew-dropped morning

I ask like I breathe,
and am wiser for asking,
regardless - no, in spite -
of not knowing.

What you don’t know is
sometimes now I forget you exist
the way I used to forget myself
when I was too busy thinking of you
(and you were too busy
thinking of someone else
to bother with someone
who bothered to think of you at all)

Hey, have you ever thought of moving on?
I’m never coming back
Or is your world so empty, so small?
(You always liked it painted black)

Look, I’m just too busy to bother with
someone who only cares enough
to bother someone who’s better off

Love, I’d write you a reply
except - why even try?
If not to make my feelings known

But it’s not a worthwhile use of my time,
I would rather turn anguish to fanciful rhymes
and write for the fun of it; quite useful for a nuisance
(yes, that’s what we call you - a worm and a fly)

All I know is that life was fully atoned
until you rumbled through it
like a great rolling stone,
and crushed all the soft light
I’d been careful to grow

I’m so sorry to be scathing
(not in the slightest, no!)
just to slight you, and slice back a piece
for my once-starving bones

What you don’t know is
when I’m not forgetting your ghost
I am up in my mind
burning allllll of the photos

Still, I can’t forget
how you would like to tell me lies
just to see if I’d believe them
and you knew I always did;

a body built of blind faith
the skin of our arms touching -
two forsaken parallel lines

hands to never meet or hold
your body plumed too deep
within a cloud of cigarette smoke

And selfishly
your bold-lined letters came,
dusting off your guilt-laden coat -
you tell your tales, such make-believe,
to make belief of old false hopes

I wake sometimes remembering
our years-long fever dream
broken out in sweat of dread and shame
at having fallen for so grand a scheme

Of all things, I did not believe
in love but common decency,
until you shook me to my senses
shaking off the rosey lenses

Did you cage me or set me free?

I watch the *** of cool water
slowly boil -

a bubble, five bubbles, seventeen, and more

and if only I could multiply,
I could watch each bubble
die as it were born

but I am at the stove
with my two hands, my two eyes
and my one brain, and my sole life

that never seems to make good
fast enough in time

I am tired of patience
I am tired of waiting
for water to boil

I am boiling on full flame
just watching the water giggle at my toil

and if I could simmer down
I would, but I don’t

because I was born boiling
and it will always be so

the bubbles appear and they vanish,
taking thoughts as they go

here they come,
there they go

My cat has learned
to love my kisses -

cats don’t kiss -

somehow he learned
that it’s a good thing.

All anybody, any lovely, can do
is to embrace the love they’re given,

and I can’t take it -

how few of these good things
do we find?

Why does a good thing
hurt to find?

In this winding one-way street,
I sent for the fire brigade,

a couple years too late,

a couple years
too young to know
how to dial a telephone.

the mahogany red
of these sticky beads,
they stick to me
and stain the sheets,

even here in bed,
even in my dreams,
clotting in my head -
a book that won’t be read
words printed large and wide
as the blinding of dread

could I make out a letter?
backing up on the bed,
hit the wall with the back of my head,

peeling, scraping the scabs off
old wounds I don't know how to tend

just once, could I
peel, and feel
my skin again?