Let’s make one thing clear:
I am not here.
I will be nothing to you,
whether you decide or do I.
And no matter what hints and whirls in my brain
I have nothing to say,
just gestures that begin to extend then fizzle and fail.
And I am a reminder only
of what I once almost was,
this body suggestive
only, not actually meaning, offering,
or capable.
Mind and body both.
So don’t even think.
Don’t think it or anything else
to do with me.
You can just go away
if you’re even here.
I’m not.
And I won’t.
You can take that to the bank.
Laughing.
He who laughs first laughs lasts.

In my invisibility
I will enjoy it
defiantly
as if it was something that I wanted
which it wasn’t
but I’ll find it that way anyway.

And you can’t take my solace away from me
casually,
as if you were interested in what was underneath,
but then you weren’t,
anyway.

I would do better to forget you
before I come to know you.
I don’t know if you cause me pain
or make me remember pain again.
Am I humiliated, or do I merely fear humiliation.
Or is it my fear that is humiliating.
Do you uncover or cover me up.
Is it my falsehood or my truth that I hate.

In the middle of the night, she wanted me to
feel her belly—I forget if there was a tumor there
or the gap where a tumor used to be or
just a gap, a mysterious gap in her belly.
And old skin ripples and softens—now mine does though
nobody knows, I look only a little different,
and only I see the downturn in my mouth in the mirror.
I don’t say anything to you because I don’t want to talk about
the gap in my belly, the sags, the hardness that shouldn’t be there.
All I have to say is about pain, pleasure and poison.
So I wait for the good days to speak, I avoid answering questions
and try not to be too much myself as I am.
I wonder about your quiet days, though,
what dismal truths do you keep to yourself?
And do you have moments like these,
reaching through the lonely velvet dream
towards the scintillating shadows of someones,
only to fumble and go slack, exhausted
before having touched the other end,
to find if it’s an inky vibrating projection
or an ephemeral, delicate reality?

I know you are there though I can’t reach you.

And I have something to say though I don’t know what it is.

It isn’t that I love you, although I might.

It's some unformed thought, an adventure lemon bright,

cold lake shine, green dark roots,

quiet mud…

It is peaceful urgency,

reposed progress.

It is knowing that between us words will play like children in the light,

and their games will endlessly expand,

and we will always glance and understand

that language secret even from ourselves.

the fever sits on my face
like an owl on my nose
brooding

The daddy long legs dandy
has a mad hatter laugh.

where were you
when the world unrolled itself before me,
all teeth and tongue

where were you
when the promise that silence would end
never fulfilled itself

where were you,
where were you?

always a one, always a two,
two sides in the mirror, one black, one white,
draped off the other.

two was enough to make one and one was enough, enough.

so I found myself a friend to limp along--with

and we limp along we limp along

one of us is unreal and occasionally we argue as to which one it is

but I think it’s me, I think it’s me,
that teeth and tongue
for two was always found in one
it opens wide and reaches round and—

schwoomp.