The best way to fall in love, they say, is by moonlight:
it illuminates the beautiful, masks scars and pockmarks.
As I quickly discovered, dimly lit four-hour bus rides
have a similar effect.
We didn’t fall in love, of course,
but I couldn’t swallow the chalky pill
of recent heartbreak
and you coaxed it down my throat
with your tongue, which to me is close enough.
You were 23, and whether you thought
I was 18 as is true or 20 as I claimed didn’t seem to matter.

You were beautiful, an inescapable mountain
to climb, the other passengers vibrating,
shadow-coated foothills.
We had the ethereal intimacy of two strangers who know
they will never see each other again. I kissed you.

It was to forget the taste of empty mouth,
frothing memory foam,
the way smoke whistles through toothgaps:
a caustic taste, one that I’d had no luck scraping away
like so much tongue plaque.  


What does a year of love smell like?
Sweat, mostly.

Frozen central park ramble, attic and basement musk,
my sweaters turned her perfumed pajamas
turned peace pipe turned dusty relic. Whiskey,
and shattered glass windshield,
the St. Marks hotel because it was cheap
and took cash. All colored by one perfect summer
that I can no longer remember anything
but the specifics of. All this you did not smell like,
but it was dim and you felt cozy
nuzzled into my shoulder.

I held you the way I held her,
so maybe we did fall in love
for two hours on that bus ride to Boston;
call it love by proxy. We burrowed
into one another because we had found
some eternal twilight, a midsummer night
on a Peter Pan bus in the dead of winter.
I gripping your thigh as if I only held tightly enough,
I wouldn’t be ripped back into reality
when the bus stopped. In the bright
fluorescent lights of South Station
we brushed lips awkwardly, exchanged
numbers, I grabbed my bags,
and you were gone forever.

You’d invited me to a bar,
and then your friend’s couch,
but ******* you would have made it much too real.
You and her would be differentiated,
writhing bodies are undeniably unique.
The ripped gut-wrench feeling I felt
the next day would have been unbearable.
Because intimacy informs loss, and
love by proxy only ever serves as a distraction
from the fading marble of plasticine light hovering,
indifferently, just out of frame. But it was love.
You were beautiful, and we’d found a moment
of viscous life. You numbed my pain for a while,
reminded me why I hadn’t swallowed those pills.
In that eternal twilight, it was all I needed.

if you only eat from a feedbin you have a limited number of grain

kafka said the leopards would become part of the ceremony but no matter how many nights like this I keep waking up with
out any wild animals
or rather, any sense of the mystical rhythm that surely guides
deviations from this steady alpine path.
today when I got off the bus in Arequipa
I realized that some people look up to the mountains, even in summer, and always see snow.  
and some people don't.
and this is the way it goes?

I dreamt South America would provide a release onto the page, and my words would set at least a dozen feet free
but the more ******* I buy the more I realize that all I strive is to feel tired
deserved or no
and to lift my head and see snow.
and some people don't.
and this is the way it goes.

Jesus was looking impatient
It was already quarter past nine
He was sure he'd sent out invitations
And he'd turned all the water to wine

He'd promised a memorable banquet
As tomorrow he'd surely be dead
But the shops had been short of a few things
So he'd just had to settle for bread

When a knock at the door made him flutter
He adjusted his dress and his hair
He opened and bid all assembled
"Wipe your feet and then sit over there"

They shuffled and took to their places
But they looked slightly I'll at their ease
They could see all the wine and the bread rolls
But what of the ham and the cheese?

Jesus said grace in his fashion
"Cheers Dad" with his thumb held up high
"But be careful, this bread is my body"
"Now who wants a nice bit of thigh?"

They tucked in with nervous expressions
He'd been guzzling since they had arrived
He explained "It's my blood in these bottles"
"And without it I'd not have survived"

The apostles were forming conclusions
Their boss had been ****** all these years
But the wine washed away their objections
And the music drowned out all their fears

So they partied and danced on the table
They played twister and tidily-winks
Then stumbled off out to a nightclub
Because Judas was buying the drinks

They caroused and they conga'd till morning
Till their stomachs and bladders had failed
And that's how young Jesus got hammered
And the very next day he got nailed

"Beautiful," you sigh, "You are beautiful."
Muffled against my collarbone
But suddenly, you are not the one I trust
A different house, a different night
A very different boy
Who expected very different things of me
He used the same words
But when he called me beautiful
He was not talking about
My glowing personality
And I said no
I swear I said no
So when I got afraid
You thought it was you
But it's not your fault
It's mine.
It's mine.
(I said no, I swear.)