Don't leave me,
here alone in the dark.

Please
turn on the light.
I'm ready to see,
I'm just scared.

Please be my courage.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

I

From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.

II

Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.

III

For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
‘Another little drink won’t do us any harm.’
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They’ve got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...

. . . .
And so the song breaks off; and I’m alone.
They’re dead ... For God’s sake stop that gramophone.

You said, "give it time and you'll feel better."

At first, I believed you and so dragged myself on.

But now, every day more acute than the last,

I've come to hate those words you left me with.

They linger for hours into the night while I pretend to sleep

They take from me the future of ours, each time anew

It was a lifetime ago, but my wounds are still deep

Held by the stitches of the last words you shared

Unable to heal in the salve of time,

Kept fresh by the miasma of your tales

the thing about feelings
is that they change
yesterday,
  you may have been
   completely infatuated
    with someone  
     or entirely immersed
     in sadness,
   but that doesn’t mean
that’s how you feel now
or how you’ll feel forever
and i fear that people forget that,
  i fear we fail to remember
   that emotions are not permanent
    and maybe that’s why
     her stomach hurts
    when she thinks about
   the girls in his life
  before her
  or why i’m reluctant
   to share old poems
    because i don’t want anyone
     to think that’s how i feel today
    so maybe we should start asking
   “how are you?” more often
     and stop accepting
      the default “i’m okay.”
       and maybe we should start
      caring more about
    what people say now,
   instead of dwelling on
  words of the *past

That lonely feeling i used to get
at 4 a.m. when the whole world
is silent
when my thoughts screamed loud enough
to fill the void with
anxiety
pain
and reality
ever since i saw your eyes
that feeling hasn't washed over me
4 a.m. is no longer lonely
and the thoughts that used to scream
anxiety
pain
and reality
now scream
you
you
and you.
*-s.k.