I want to talk to you in whispers
and the language of the leaves
pouring down in winter:
you are silent, like the autumn sky
all the clouds stalled in their paths
for the noon-time nap by the river.

Will you not sit down by my side?
The world is hurrying away
like the floating lights on waters;
I will make for you a tiara of
forgotten flowers, and a garland
of evening songs, and say
many stories of larks and lamps;

It is dusk, now but not here:
center of my world, my refuge,
I'll plant a kiss on your *****,
give me those mist-wet feet
let me shelter them to my heart
this warmth will redeem me

Ethereal petals
blue
unfurling a presence

on the waveless
shoreless waters

bathed in golden light

a smile, a portal
to vaster worlds
unfolding
on the placid lake

a golden peace
unending dawn

hopeless, helpless, confusing, gloomy have faith dark muggy muggy
evening of hopes, oh what an error, how could I, this again and again
same old same old, hopeless, helpless, chimera, mirage, don't trust
lost, defeated, distant, too far the journey, endless, keep walking
featureless, destiny, fate, tired, unclear, ebbing evening light, faceless;
let go, less hope, less help, less clear, less light, less known, only less
not no hope, no help, not clear, no light, unknown, indecipherable;
endless, hopeless, confusing, tired, can't walk, where to go, how, how
light is within, destiny, fate, chimera, mirage, nevertheless, endless

How many times and on how many screens has JFK been assassinated? she asks a few minutes into the commute.

Someone has said that to me before, I say.

And I notice, now for the first time, even she is a rerun or a ghost
or an unfortunate reminder of the one who came before her,
from the artfully mismatched polish on her toenails to the way her wrists wrap around each other as she talks her quiet talk, her fingertips balancing her iPhone, which streams Jackie Then Kennedy scrambling toward the back of the Cadillac. Its the Zapruder footage in slow motion and somehow in HD, and she touches the thumbs up icon when the footage comes to a close.

Across from me sits a dead man. I'm sure of it—his death. He lounges in himself, his belly fat imperialistic in its expanse, moving beyond beltline and claiming a space all its own on the torn, blue cushioned seat. The dead man looks a bit like Marlon Brando, post-Tango in Paris, when the depression set in and with it the weight, but like Brando, there's still a cool magic in the deep lines of the dead man's forehead, something forlorn and knowing in the drag of his eyelids.

It's here that I remember I'm a writer. And moments like these, I'm supposed to render in belabored yet fragmented ways.

That's ego, she says, not looking up from her phone.

What's that? I say.

The way you pigeonhole me. Rerun, ghost, et cetera, she says. Maybe I've made love to a sad man like you before. Maybe you're a trigger for me. Maybe I know everyone you're going to be, everything you're going to say.  Like I was going to tell you these pants, these pants are lenin pants and I got them from Bali. And I didn't say it because I already knew your response.

Are they ethically made? we say smugly and simultaneously.

And the subway car does that screeching sound you hear in movies and the tunnels outside do that motion blur you see in movies and I try to kiss her but she says that uh-uh cowboy line you know from movies.

Brando had affairs, I say.

Kennedy had affairs, she says.

Have you ever had an affair?

It was exhausting, she says, the performance required. All the effort in your vocal affectations, those terrible 3 p.m. lunches, the pet names, your obligatory passion and one-liners, the secrecy for the sake of secrecy, the purchase and disposal of lingerie. If I could get the time back—

I'd spend it alone with a glass of red wine and a good book, we say.

I am late, flying the long detour
blocked my usual path this morning
another scaffolding
rising to grab a pack of the sky

entering the building for work
I see a thousand blinding lights
each emblazoned
with many shades and colours
of the same words

'I want' 'Give me' 'Done yet?'
'Deadline'
'Give me' 'Give me' 'Talk to me'

echoing many times over

I cowered into my cabin
crawling into the cave
dug in through the wall

and hung upside down
like a bat

this is a yogic pose
mindfulness meditation
I'm seeking out solace

when did the week end?

Swaths of air answered
in a language of hushed silence,
spat down by a giant Catherine wheel
hung from the roof.

Deluge tears, the storm clouds engulfing the wide world,
none to steady the canoe on the Galilee;

This the dust-path yoked to the burden of our deed,
beaten for teaching love, up the hill of penitence:

for here we traded the Spirit for passing gain,
calumny for mercy, who showed us the mirror

bearing witness, the wind heaving in the silence
we handed him over to the lash and the crucifix,

Yet, inscrutable this love for an ungrateful world
that parts the seas, and calls to life our faith dead,

pouring down, a heavenly stream though undeserved
carrying us across in arks and covenants

When the winds got to the depths
they came alive, them embers
that I let smoulder
deep in the sacral chambers
bathed I returned in grace
but not before

I shouted out into the well
a fiery hymn
a flaming rant
empty now my soul
drenched in the echoes
each more tormenting
than before

this is how you lose it
this is how