When you’re gone
How do I know?  
I don't know  
But I do

When you are gone
I put on my sailor suit
Blood red, ghostly white, but mostly blue
Crawl into my crammed craft  
A waterbed of not smooth sailing, but I  
Implacable in a turbulent feeling sea
Unstoppable, scanning, searching
Bobbing and buoyant with the surf
Dodging everything in a cumbersome path
Until you are found

When you are gone
Other boats sail by
What is she looking for?
Do not try to rescue me, other-
I am not lost, except lost to you.

My ocean, my seafaring friend
Curious current, unstoppable is
carrying me
holding me kindly
in its unfathomable depth
Until you are found.

2.
Like a dog knows
When It’s owner is coming home
Home is all they know.
When the place where you are
is not home,
I become rabid,
Like a mad dog.
Anxious
Alarmed
Scared
Angry
Hurt
Weepy

When you are gone-
I am gone too- pieces of
Not knowing, yet knowing
I am one with the needy sea
Seeking into seaweed ravaged ravines.
Old stuck and sacred scars
Hastening my tale of woe and foe
Circling my desperation for you
entrenched in my sailor’s saga
Dry kicking feral fish jumping
Drinking thirsty spiraling
fastened to a chain-linked fence
in the middle of an empty and wise ocean
Until you are found

Dog tired and out of options
Exhausted and retched
There is only one place

In a dug-out of my own making
I open my eyes
What I see
Ambiguity
And I can't be there
I'm trying to be there
I can’t be there
I’m trying to be there
I can’t be there
I’m trying to be there
He's angry
She's angry
You're angry
I'm angry, then
sad and hurt
Who thought up this twisted plot
Some call it life
There are better plots
Are there not?

Mostly right now
I’m happy
Happier than ever  
But, temporal like an old wave
Sensing the shore
Sensing its own demise:
just a look
Or a look away is
A wave is a goodbye.
swallowed in the arms of mother-father
You’re gone
But, I'm happy right now
Why should my happiness depend on you?

I know it's not like that for you
Really, I don’t know anything
And it’s driving me crazy
A part of the ‘what plot’ I wrote
Conspiracies make me crazy
Not knowing makes me crazy
You are making me crazy
Yes, you
No, not me
It’s all your fault
Yes, you

Ambiguity is not a kind bedfellow
Did I say not kind
What I meant was; ambiguity is a piece of..
The puzzle, what did you think I was going to say.
I'm trying
Please forgive me
My meanness,
my neediness,
my clinging
my darling
  
the very best part of you
no meanness
None at all
You get choked up on hurt
And try sometimes
but really you can’t
the words come out all jumbled
as you try to defend, to no end
because you understand
It’s not you.
Don't think I'm putting you on a pedestal because I'm not
You could fall from a pedestal and get hurt
I'm a realist
Before all
Then a dreamer
Mostly a dreamer
If I’m being honest

3.
This I know
The essence of what you are
And the essence of what you are not
Not the particulars
Those like lost pieces of you
Are they
Lost for a reason?
Or forever.
I choked on the word
I don’t understand my need to tell you everything
As if my life depended on it
As if your life depended on it
I’m not competing
Believe me
This is as much me as it is you
I just don’t understand this cruel twist of fate

I want to think I wasn’t the author of this sad story
Where there are no good or bad characters,
no good or bad plots
Endless words of explanation
For all I know
It begins and ends here now
Maybe I really am just crazy

Just a word from you is all I ask
So I can sleep

4.
I’ll show this to you when the time is right
forget about everything for tonight
If my poem is out of tune
Out of words
Out of rhyme
I’ll write another
And another
And another
Until the ferocity is gone
And I can be peaceful.
This is my wish for you, too.
Why do I get this way when you’re gone?