The waters of the East River were blue,
bluer than I'd ever let myself expect,
bluer than the sky today.

The sight of the lights and shadows
Swimming over the passengers wasn't something
I'd known I was missing.

A few uncharacteristic craning necks;
I wasn't the only one
Newly displaced from below-ground.

Outside,
It was bright enough to color-blind;
The view from the window
For one moment
Rendered a monochrome tableau
Of New York's industrial past.

Then the red brick buildings,
Precarious window units and
Makeshift curtains of every color.

Between these-
Between these--
Heart-stopping views of
Sun-washed streets like rivers,
The sunroofs and food carts
Glinting like silver scales
In the early evening glare.

Each time I surged forward,
Gripped the overhead pole convulsively,
Drank in that view
As greedily as anything;

I'd never loved the city
Like I loved it from fifty feet up.


And the walk home was
Novel from the west;
Suddenly the sidewalks ramble-wide,
Suddenly the parks,
Suddenly the people.

A block from my apartment,
A teenager looped his finger
Through the dangling handle
Of my grocery bag as we passed-
Pulled gently,
Not tugging away,
Leading me into a turn.

We were facing each other then,
Even as our feet carried us in different directions;
"Can't I take you out?"

His youth and my mood made it charming-
His wide eyes and narrow shoulders
Held none of the threat
That comes with a man's stature-
And I couldn't help
But soften the no with a smile
Before carrying on
Towards home.

the altar clouds break:
cry holy, holy, holy,
swooning in the sunlight,
fingers threading grass,
sacrilegious lifting face to sun
instead of sky,
cry holy, holy, and think of horses,
manes aflame,
your lips were taught heavenly father
but cry apollo just the same.

Late snow and incense;

A copy of The Essential Rumi laid next to the oranges we left out for Venus last night.

It is springtime and it seems we could learn every kind of magic the world has to offer us.

It's like you don't know and that's the worst thing,
When I stumble in late from a night well out,
And bleed you out on pen and paper,
Flush you out like the alcohol.

It helps, doesn't it?

God, so much.

I'm still writing poems to you all the time,
Smearing ink off the dry erase board
With the heel of my hand,
So I'll wake up hungover
With black palms and overlapping words
Mapped all over this white board.

In theory all of my feelings for you
Get washed away this way,
Every bottle of wine anew,
But in truth I whisper them in my sleep
And know them still at sunrise
Like it's a surprise after all these years
That I still love you
Like I do

I.

Your comment came to me attached to an ad for condoms,
I was so tickled that I saved a picture of the screen,
So obvious a sign and one I was so glad to receive.

II.

When you were angry with me once,
Your message said, "I love you. But-"
I love you. Period. But.
A confession and an admission,
A statement of fact and then a feeling,
And I felt so bad but you loved me. But-,
And that was all I ever asked.

Pressing hard to my lips
The back of my wrist,
Saliva pooling thickly
As my stomach churns sickly-
Old habits dying hard,
And dead-set on
Killing me, too

I need desperately another mouth
To occupy mine
At times like this,
Scrambling kisses
That you'll break away from
To tell me smiling
What my teeth taste of today

Instead I'm ******* bruises
Into the thin skin of my forearms-
Idle hands, etc.-
And taking shuddering breaths
Until the impulse passes
Because six months clean
Is not one more thing
That this disease
Will steal from me.

The cool of the morning seems a temporary relief from the heat
rather than the end of the season
The dew already being wicked away through the breaks in the clouds
left over from last night's storm
Even as a Northern wind sends word of worse weather on its way

But the hands of the sun are as hot and insistent on your body
as those of a lover
And they hold you in the blissful in-between
in the honeymoon of August
Walking in and out of shadows to feel the summer and the fall

Your stillness draws me stalking still
Through redwoods, deadwoods, rotting trees,
With purpose, with intent to ****,
My love, you've made a wolf of me.
You called me to your forest heart,
I crossed in blood, put birds to flight,
I tracked you through the gath'ring dark,
Concentric circles, dying light.
But hunted love, what eyes you've got-
I thought them wide in fear at first,
When on your trail I followed hot,
But now they're looking dark with thirst,
And standing here, day fading fast,
Můj upír, love, I see the trap.

I want to ask you if you've ever seen grass
Move like the ocean
(I don't have to ask if you've ever
Seen the ocean;
There's emotion in your eyes-
There's a motion to your eyes
That lets me know you have.)

I want to take you mountain climbing.
I will give you rings that turn
Your fingers green
And I will marvel at the the chemical reaction
That is your skin.

I will drive with you for hours
Until we find that sea of grass
Because we are not two drops in
The ocean but two blades
Grounded but enjoying the breeze,
Rooted but

I mean.

Want.

I want, not I will, because I won't,
Because I don't know your name, quite,
And you could have a nickel allergy
That I don't know about.
You are made of things
Like that,
I know:
Things that I don't know.

Our friends called you a ghost,
But you were always a dove to me,
Hanging back, voice low,
A quiet presence
Or unnoticed absence.
But then you were that but at my side,
Consistently, and often,
A warm weight at my elbow
Pressed tight on too-small couches
Looking at my folded hands
At intervals throughout the movie,
And my breathing was artifice,
Exaggerated,
So every intake touched my arm to yours.
And I was surprised to hear you laugh
When you rarely had before
And I could pretend it was me at your side
That made it so;
I was still young enough to be
Distracted by the thought of kissing,
And you were so,
So distracting.

We found out on a Wednesday,
Two days too late.

We walked barefoot through the dunes after sunset
And picked every yellow flower we could find.
(There were only yellow flowers.)

We put them out to sea,
One for each part of you we had loved.
One for your father who had loved you.
And one for each of the things you had loved,
Those lucky things,
Your best friend, your favorite bra.
A dozen scrubland daisies in the low tide.

The color stained our hands
And I cried every time I saw it-
On my palms, on the shoulders of the highway.
As if you had put every yellow thing on earth
And I would never be allowed
To forget it, the same way
I would never be allowed
To forget you.

I found a new bad habit in an
Airport announcement
"Now boarding London-Heathrow"
Thought, how much could it be? so
I pulled it up and-
Oh, that much.
I checked my bank account.
Our friends thought I was funny
When I said I'd take donations-
Who doesn't dream of running?
They didn't ask me why.
We joked around, I shook my can,
Laughed, until you stayed my hand-
All I need in London is
Directions to your bed.

Watching you grow up has been
Like watching the batteries die
In the last flashlight between us
And the blackout;
You're mad at me but I
Told you to change them two
Weeks ago.

You've been keeping terrible secrets
On folded pieces of paper
And leaving them around:

-You wish you'd lived in New York
  When those planes hit the towers.

-You've been trying for six months
  To make your boyfriend leave you.

-You hate writers, instinctively-

I turned this over and saw you had not
Made an exception for me.

'Q

I learned in a class once
That people are attracted to
Romantic partners who are
About as attractive
As they are,
And I thought of him
(I didn't linger long)
Then I thought of you.

And I think you're
Pretty handsome
And I think my hair
Looks good today.

And I think then it's
Not my fault,
Because both of us,
We're pretty okay.

And I want a chance
To see your
Pretty okay
Under London streetlights
As the fog rolls in,
Wet sidewalk slow.

But you told me there's no
Fog in London and
That florescent lights
Don't burn yellow.

You told me "look me up
When you come to London"'
You turn from me
In the streetlamp's glow.

'Q

The airport terminal was so full
In October it felt like Christmas.

Eight gates packed with people and
No seats left I couldn't stop smiling.

And the runway was lined with red
And blues and greens so that when
The plane took off I couldn't
Look away, I wanted those
Christmas lights
To be the last thing I'd see
If I died right then.

And I realized that if I died
Right then that I'd be okay with  it
For the first time, and I checked,
I asked myself, "Are you happy
Right now?" And I said "Yes I'm
So **** happy right now!"

And I was,
And it was true,
And I didn't believe in anything
Big or anything so it was a pretty
Big deal that I would be okay
To die right then,
And we leveled out and it
Was so dark outside and
I could see the Christmas lights on
For miles.

'Q

Spring settles in with a sigh:
Mild breath and soft sun,
Trees still bare, but hopeful.
I'm tracing the words of this song in my head,
Because what is a song of Spring
If not a song of my self?
Mild tongue and soft eyes
As greening grass whispers,
'It is time to be in love.'
Anxious heart bubbling like an unseen brook,
Ancient heart thawing like the dawning of the day.
Timed, I'm sure, like a butterfly jar,
But full of unrushed beauty all the same.
The early light has made the sky
Free of blue: and so am I.

Some nights the necklace you gave me feels cold,
Colder than it should given where it rests
Against my chest,
And I worry after you,
Extensively.

It's just:
I'm going to burn
your fur-lined boots
with you
still
in them.

nonviolent,
but for how much longer?

i've seen the doubt in your eyes
and it's turning to hate-
you've never known a cause
with so little hope,
you've never been part of
the resistance, never a stopper
of progress.

you believe in your cause, yes,
but do you believe
in its attainability
anymore?

i've seen the love in your eyes
and it's making you righteous-
i've caught glimpses of what
you're capable of
by the flash of passing streetlamps
and i want to see you
when you fall.

you've never looked so beautiful
as with your back against this wall.

'Q

Two years ago,
In a fit of braveness
I haven't matched since,
I told him I would always
Be a little in love with you.
I don't know how much
He remembers it,
But if he ever asked,
I don't know how
I could tell him
Anything but the truth.

'Q

I'm not feeling
excellent
lately.

'Q

I want those low smoky bar songs
To make you think of me
I want you to want to see me
In that kind of loud ***** place
Out of place
And a little drunk

I want your frown
I want your glare at the bartender
I want your hand on my arm
When French is all I can manage
French, and your name

I'm speaking French for you
And you never notice

I want a little strong something
To bring out those r's
And your concern
I want your "lightweight"
I want your done-in kiss

I want my bad decisions
To bring one out in you.

Because every page in my textbook
Is the way your hair gets curly
When you sleep for so long
After staying up too late
Reading
And cursing
And drinking tea
And going about some business
That's nothing to do with me.

'Q

Love is, I think, adjusting for time zones
Before sending any tweet.

'Q

Writing about you is cheap and easy:
Fast-food poetry.

I can queue you up in ink
Wherever a pen is given to me
With little more prompting
Than that soft black hair,
Those unhappy eyes.

You're new old shoes,
Worn thin around the edges
And where the world weighs the most,
But I reach for you for every long journey,
For every quick trip.
I wear you in line
At the McDonald's in the airport.

I don't order anything,
But I pour you onto napkins
And let you flutter away-
Nothing new.

'Q

Today you pushed back your sleeves
Suddenly, violently,
"I did this in London."
Two tattoos still raw,
Still red the way you complain
People's always are when they
Show them off too early.

With a 5 point needle
And a sixteenth ounce of black ink
You'd bled yourself a crutch
And brought my legs out from under me.

"It means a lot that you like it."
You have scarred your body with
My words of love and you dare to blush
Under my consideration. Every time you
Touch those marks I imagine my fingers
On your arms, tracing your art
And arteries until you pull me in
And kiss me, put your fingers on my arms
And say thank you

                           (I love you)

Say anything but, "it means a lot"
Because I've said that you mean
So much to me so many times and
You just brushed it off, I want to
Brush those lightweight lies off your lips
With my lips, with my fingers
On your lips, until I draw the ink from
Under your skin and you understand
It to be the poison that it is
When it reaches my heart and turns sense to
Seconds until our next touch
And I never have to see that tattoo again
And I never have to feel this way again
Maybe then you'll understand

'Q

Your worst days
Are why I can't break up with you
And why I have to.

You said, I want to go where the riots are,
Where my affliction has no name.
That's what you call it, your pacifism:
Your affliction, your disease.
Like a flaw that keeps you from fighting.
But I've seen you argue with
Unclenched fists and
Disappointed eyes and I know
It's not that you can't fight,
It's that you won
A long time ago.

'Q

I knew it wasn't you that passed me
On a bike this morning, but oh,
It looked like you. God,
He looked like you.

And I'm glad he was on a bike,
Somewhat because he wasn't you and
That meant I could let my head
Turn, let myself watch him pass by
With open hunger the way
I could never watch you,
But mostly because on foot I would have
Pulled him close by the coat that
Looked like one you wear and
Whisper in his ear,
"You look like the boy I want to ****,"

And I didn't want to get arrested,
And I didn't want him to take me up
On my offer
(But part of me wanted him to take me

Up on my offer
Because you never would)
Because I didn't know this was
Anything more than hero worship,
I thought this was little love,
Hearts in margins and
Poems in black ink,
I didn't know this was the kind of
Feeling that had people accosting
Delivery boys for wearing dark jackets

And I think I need to give up quick
Before you, me, or the delivery boy
Gets hurt.

'Q

Whenever I think of that
Stupidly good picture you
Took when you had the flu,
I smile that same smile
And put on that song,
And entertain for a second
The idiotic notion
Of being in love.

God, you're such an idiot.
I was fifteen and you had
An English accent.
I was sixteen and you
Were twenty-two.
I was seventeen and wearing
The necklace you gave me every day.
I'm eighteen and I still do.

I had to buy a new notebook
Because the last one was
Three years of your name
Written over and over again
With increasing impatience
And disintegrating vagueness.

I only write about you in black ink.

I only write about you.

I read that women like Spock
Because making someone love
Who says he cannot
Appeals to them.

I read that you usually
Go for guys and that you're
Incapable of feeling love
In the letters you wrote me
In confidence and I
Have to admit-

Those people researching Star Trek
May have been on to something.

To die by your side
Would be terrible, actually.
I write so much
Just for not having you,
I can only imagine what losing you
Would do for my productivity.

'Q

I opened this page as he said,
"Write what you know,"
And I heard a girl whisper,
"You know I heard once
That writers don't write what
They know; they write what they
Wished they did,"
Guilty I lifted my pen
To keep from tracing that first word:
You.

I read a poem about love
And left my things for someone to steal
Because I did not have a notebook on hand
To write about you

I told my roommate, "Just needed this."
I told my sister, "Yeah, I've heard that song."
I hadn't had tea for hours but I shook
To write about you.

I had to say somehow
How I wore your necklace every day
I had to say that there's a playlist titled, "****
**** ****" about how I feel about you.

I had to write about this one secret thing
That I've only ever lied about
Or said so honestly
That you didn't even notice.

Friends say "I love you" all the time.

When you say it I pretend that you're not 24,
That you hope I don't believe you,
That I don't understand,
When you say, "I love you,"
That I'm that one good thing you say
You don't want to mess up.

I pretend you shake
To write about me.

'Q

I think it's okay
That I romanticize you
Because I will never have the chance
To be disappointed
With reality

We will never waver
Awkward unsure of a hug
So I see you through a sun-exposed camera
Laughing brilliant smiling
Shaggy black hair

I scoffed when people
Wore crosses like talismans
But my idea of you lives likewise in a necklace
You gave me as a joke while
I was falling in love

'Q

If you want to talk of sense,
Find me at midday.
Otherwise speak in riddles
Of bergamot
And fey.*

'Q

I don't want to talk about it.

"I write poetry about people all the time," I say.
("I write about you. Over. And over," I don't.)

'Q

It's easy to believe in God on an airplane.
Mishapen rows of rolling clouds could
Conceivably be His ranks of Old Testament
Angels, the way they were before we gave them
Blue eyes and human faces.

I like accelerating
As fast as it can get there
(Because even if it is a Saab,
It's still a sports car)

I like accelerating in the fog
Pressing forward into the unknown darkness
Past the hanging anglerfish lure
On every street lamp

I like to think Keats would like it
(Driving fast in the dark where you know
There's no speed traps)

And I like the word "like" in poetry
Because love on the page means something so
Different from what I mean
(It's a word that
I don't want you associating with me)

Unless you're here to cast me as your Last
Duchess because I love you as much as
I love driving in the dark as much as
I love this song as much as
I love your shoes and I love your eyes

(but I really do love your eyes)

So I don't like the word "love" because it
Implies some kind of favoritism that I'm not
Willing to give you if it means
I only like this song
Means using that word all wrong
Because you're not better than my Saab-
(you just have nicer eyes)

You don't know
As much as you think you know.
Life isn't an episode of FRIENDS.
Six people can't be happy like that
For ten years.
And a small coffee shop
In New York
Can't stay open that long
Anyway.

Les Mis wasn't based
On a Shakespeare play
And you sound like an idiot.

You can't rhyme.

Dr. Seuss is not your favorite poet,
And you're allergic to artificial sweeteners.

And, I kid you not,
You're going to turn 17
To find that your favorite TV show
Is an MTV adaption of "Teen Wolf"
And you won't even be sorry.

You're going to tell your name
To strangers on the internet
And they'll give you a new one.

(And it will be
The best decision of your life)

You never get over Paris.
Or road trips.
Or libraries.
Or oreos.

And on
January 9
Next year

The sun licks a warm honey strike
Up the back of my head, heats the
Hair there like a hot coke you
Left in a closed car on a beach day;
Catches on my fingers, too
Curled fingers cushioning my skull away from
A plastic pressurized wall.

And it's peaceful, and misleading:
I could drowse believing my body
To be sleeping against the slattered
Windows of a San Francisco street-car

Until all at once the engines scream excitedly
And throw our little toothpaste-tube
Forward and, improbably, up

And that shadow on the
Water could be a toy plane
Surely we're bigger than that:
This close to the sun, we ought to
Shadow a city block

But above the cloud layer, we are
Nothing. The sun here burns so
Brightly it bakes the very sky
A hard, kiln blue, and I know now
Than man was made for the sky:

Clouds sitting like icebergs in this,
Apollo's lake, a more than adequate
Consolation prize, given the circumstances
That we will never have Antarctica

Down in the snow you won't find
Thin patches and thunderheads, anyway,
Drawing dragons and tracing cherubs
In the overdone meringue

But the ice flows pull together
And I lose all sense of scale
When I look away at the call of
"Peanuts, pretzels, M&M;'s,
Please keep your seatbelts on"

And for all the marvel outside,
I'm struck by this: how steady a desk
A seat-back tray makes.
And I put my notebook down for the
First time next to a
Remarkably unspilling coke
And I think, yes,
Man was made for the sky.

The flight attendant touches my hat,
Smiles with gums.
A blond boy is lanky in a Red Bull
Jersey; no skin shows.
A little girl asks something
Only a child would know.
Hollywood's double,
A model in green.
Two teenagers watch a woman stow
Her luggage overhead;
I'm grateful for the empty aisle between us.
The engines vibrate up the back of my seat
I dream of Missouri boys
Who say "Yes, ma'am."
When you push them to their knees.

the boy
two seats over
is terrified of flying

holds hands
with his friends
neither say "no ****"

in hindsight,
makes sense-
they squeeze into the bathroom

There's nothing to be said about flowers
That hasn't already been said
Pretty little pastel pallets
For landscapes and scarves
Eight dollars for a real rose
That turns to dust at the
Midnight strike of its bloom
Eight cloth daisies for a dollar
Tucked behind ears and into boots
Until the plastic breaks down and then
You buy a dozen more
Eight cloth daisies for a dollar
But I've never learned anything about life
From something that wasn't impermanent.

the whole scene
they said
stank of gasoline
charred cars
and death
and impassive I
thought then
seeing pictures
like concept art
from ‘the running man’:
for someone who
makes a living
sensationalizing
how other people
make death
you aren’t
very good
at grasping
the poetry
of the thing
you can’t say
gasoline charred
cars and death
like people
will know
just what
death is,
smells like
(gasoline and
charred cars
feels like
(baked stone
streets dust of
city buses
wind of souls

-The stars in the sky have done nothing,
-Nothing, I think, to deserve their immortalization in verse
-They are the gas lamps still burning
-From the Universe’s Victorian Anglophile phase
-Old lights we haven’t looked at long enough
-To make them fade away

-The stars are dull and distant
-And yellowed with age
-When you step out to confide in them
-On a clear Winter’s night
-And instead find yourself starstruck
-To be surrounded by shattered sky
-Collapsed at your feet and dazzling only for you
-And the deer
-Picking through this fallen snow
-In quiet meditation

-Maybe the snow dazzles only for them
-It knows your heart looks skyward