Pair of mad eyes under imposing brows;
Staring me down white and blue,
(And I can see the muscles in his neck
Straining under the power of his voice.)

Staring me down and singing
Three thousand hundred million ideas
Into my head with one defiant expression.

Two mad-wide eyes blue and white,
Mouth working ‘round words like
Projectiles aimed at my heart -
Striking down the walls Misunderstanding built
Over years and years and

His hands wrapped around the guitar
Years and years
So perfectly, striking it so lovingly -
Music staring into him staring into me
And me staring back.

I have been ill the way the sun is ill
In the black empty of nowhere
With a thousand fragments floating,
(Adoring in rings and ovals)
And no light but its own
Lonesick stare reflected from a thousand
Dull copying fragments; and it presumes
It is the loneliest of the universe's
Togetherlonely children.

I have been ill the way chalk is ill
On the blackboard staring out at
Uncomprehending faces, and then
In one let'smoveon wipe
Cleared from existence;
And some did not finish their notes.

I am ill with the grandiose
Ill-used illness, swirling my tongue
Against my own abscesses
And crying oh God it hurts
When they might have healed
But for my own foolish
Probing painful wanting.

Never as much as before -
And clumsy fingers prove
What that curled thing in my chest
Knows is as little of love
As I am morning dew:

A night thing ill-suited,
And hard for daft old Cupid
To see (so dated his eyes
Fail him even in good light).

I would have said so many many things
More than simply goodbyegoodnight
But there isn't anything to anything -
Lost my turn, went back to start,
And you will oscillate forever
In some secret dewy part
Of the thing that curls in my chest.

Your mind is a heart-trembling sight,
And often as you flaunt it I know
I should never tell you it destrings me,
(Sets me wrong and then puts me in tune.)
I mustn't ever never
Say I wish to do the same to you.

(I would caress the insides of your bones,
Kiss your esophagus, clean your arteries;
I would eagerly sew myself inside you.)
I mustn't ever never
Anglerfish my way into saying
"I would be a limb on your body."
And yet "I love you" cannot possibly -

I would live in your synapses quietly
Never intruding, you wouldn't notice me,
Perhaps even forget me by and by;
But I would electric-think my way through
Your toomuchmind sofastly:

I would repair the gaps with
Scraps of myself torn off, I would
Maintain you invisibly with
My unvisible tools unsensed
And silentdense as an atom's center
Whose disvisible weight is universelifting.

I would lift worlds onto you
As though nothing ever sang sadness
And every(right)thing strongly whispering
Through your veins would know
"I want to pulse your blood and beat your heart."

So much more "love" cannot possibly
Desire, I desire (to make you) the
Overloved lover my domain over:
The king and the grass and the sky.

Man goes on his  mismatchmaking way
All befuddled and besillied
By the sullied streets trashseeded
And growing up skyscrapers
Like mammoth trees to eat up all the sun.

He wonders why the days get shorter,
Even the summersinging days get shorter;
And the sky gets duller all scraped clean
With clouds in the gutters hugging sparrows,
And crows learning every day to cross the street.

He walks his life away.
He wanders and wonders his life away -
Never reaching out of his compoundcomplex street,
Until some Eliot composes love poetry to him;
And even then he widewonders why.

I thought to write of you,
But you are inexpressible.
I thought to write to you,
But I am a habitual liar
And I cannot be sure
My words would go without
A little extra sculpting
On their way to the keyboard.
So I have written an apology.

I will always be a little too
Undiluted. Strong coffee, maybe
Is a flattering comparison
But really it can be
So much like skunk spray.
Point is, I go too far
Often. (Constantly.)

When I am listing your virtues
And mooning on your beauty
This is a pardonable sin
But then... Pendulums must return.
And so for the nights I have cried
For no reason, or worse:
For stupid reasons,
I apologize.

Doubtless you will be hushing me
We all have our faults
And though not faultless I am
Beautiful in your eyes.

But still I must apologize.
I do not know if I can tame myself,
Or if I could,
How much melancholy
Would drag happiness with it.

I am afraid to try and see.

Balance is what I need to be
Calm, but passion breeds
The strongest beauty -
And if I am not unhappy,
Can I still be mad with joy?
I do not know, and I'm sorry,
But I cannot say I wish to see.

Up to our feet and let's leave the world:

My darling there are too many too much
And too few; my sweet, feet down
On the ground and let's go.

Into a cabin a fortress, into the whiling
Of quiet hours and smiling at
Birdsinging noise from the sun world
Through the window — into us, my love.

Into us and we and none else
(For a dreamtime if not forever)
Dipping our feet into no need no care;
And only no one shall find us there
When we retreat, the world out of our hair.
And we shall come back to dark outside
Sunshining and birdsinging.

We bracing us until rainclouds shout
"Downpour, deluge!" into our ears;
Then up to our feet, my darling my sweet,
And again into leaving.