listen, the world has changed plenty since you've last shown your face around here. nowadays, a name is the last thing we learn, if we ever do learn it. flirting is boring, death is a dinner topic, happiness is strange. pain is good. things taste backwards -- but oh, do they feel sweet. love and crime no longer compete for the gold: guess what sweetheart, they've got it, and they're sleeping together.


oh come on, don't look at me like that.


you've always underestimated your own heart, you know. and mine, for that matter. you can get away with a lot of things with a heart now -- i suppose that's another thing that's changed. remember how we used to be under its mercy? remember how we couldn't cope with the traffic of our bodies until it finally sighed some soft, silly sentence?


how long have you been gone, anyway?


no, no, that's not how it works. it isn't really a question of whether i missed you or not. that word doesn't mean anything anymore. it's become quite the popular prop. i don't have a word for what it's been like while you were--


what? what do you mean i've changed? if there's anyone who's changed it's you! i haven't changed for the sake of entering this world: look, darling, we're all thieves of space and time, and i'm just one of many trying to survive.


but...yes, i do suppose those days were nice. in their own way. when we were buried treasure. when closeness was something you had to earn first.


hey, you're smiling.


i'm not kidding -- you really are. should i stop?


well, i can't say i imagined you'd be back here again.


you want to know something, though? alright, i'll tell you.


if there's one thing i'm glad hasn't changed at all, it's how we wake up. it doesn't matter what happened hours ago. forget about what your skin remembers. can you believe it, we still manage to wake up! after all this!


i think a lot of it has to do with how competitive, how scared everyone feels. because after that, even after that, there's still that pleasant feeling of shared space. and then the silent sunrise. and then the beautiful morning.


i know.


i know, i know.


and yeah, you're still smiling.

how strange, the cloudy kindness
of the graveyard and its limbs,


and how different, earth
and any room must be,


darkened with the lust
and cheerless shapes


of people, who believe
everything they think.


so we sleep in hope, for a place
of hours flushed with health,


when new seasons mean
remembering, those seasons


when you no longer
missed home all the time


and wondered
where it went.

i.
Evil sleeps in an orchard
not far from here.
The apples sweat him out.
Dressed as god, the Sun
watches and nods.
He bleeds for them
out of his own mouth.


A god's mask
means protection.
But in time,
he will **** them dry.


And autumn will fall.
Postures will fall.
Pulses will fall,
like pills,
like poison.



ii.
A cloud forest
signals the first
of the shadows.


Summer is nocturnal.


A buttery Moon
leaves the world
warm and breathing.


The trees stir,
the stars hiccup,
and Nighttime climbs onto the birdbath
where it tells you all its tricks.



iii.
Evil blinks from a tree
where the apple skulls
intrude.
The garden combs you
through its arteries,
scooping
your midsummer grave.


A beautiful accident
closes in on itself.


And then a light like milk.
And then the whistling.



iv.
Summer whistles in the dark:
The sound of Evil kneeling
to the imagination
undoing him.


A deadly glow
becoming
a romance
on the white fences.


Nighttime draws dust
away from your shoulders,
translates Summer sound
and says,


You are your own harvest.


Your madness is only there
when you want it to be.

This is not an accident. I used to call him
a lazy criminal. Scooping hearts and spilling blood,
leaving footprints, fingerprints. Stains.
Eyes folding over -- the blindman or the beggar?
Lips that blossomed into blueprints.
Hands that rhymed with dreams, instead.


The weeknights, dark and warm
in a season of curled paper.
No speaking -- guilt only follows
past the second trip through the door.  
And then the mornings.
More sun in him than the greenhouse
where we watched dragonfly wings.
A pattern about him
like dragonfly wings.


In those days we knew
what it meant to point
without wounding.
We knew how to need someone
without wanting,
without loving.

Tonight at half past nine, meet me
in the olive grove. Deconstruct your sweetness:
I like it when you steep your voice in venom.
Tell me the names of graveyard flowers, and pluck,
pluck them clean, pluck them
at your knees,
pretend they aren't for me.
Bring me stories of caves in their nakedness,
 bring me my Atlantis.
And under this mustard streetlight,
remind me of your secret,
for tonight at half past nine,
only the moon is culprit.

July saw you drinking mimosas
underneath a tree that wept shadows.
You were never one for cloudless days
by the sea. Silver wax over golden dust.
You are beginning to realize
blue might be the loneliest colour
when caught without the sun.


Yet only the ocean can speak of love in any tense.
Look at how it creates and destroys
at the same time.
Look at how
it carries on.

her hands: blooming. sugar, hot
and humming. those wrists, sweet,
no longer sticky. yet stubborn,
reigning the laughter of two years ago.

her lips: fruit. ripe, or rotten, you
no longer remember. still, they remind you.
sin is where your body overruns your soul.
let nature trespass you once in a while.

all she wanted, to be left alone
with sky and sea. something you,
not even you, could give her. life
began to leak away in her voice,

“if the world does not stop, darling,
i just might.” and you could taste
the blood in her sigh, all those
leftovers from two years ago.

her body: gardens. the former home
of such a lovely pulse. you liked to visit
her a lot. she was once a prison of colour
in your foggy seaside town.

but the air that day: salty. streetcars unfolded
in faces you did not know. you felt the world in
past tense. “it is not only the city you have left
behind.” and your message did not reach her.