The city thunders, groans, drones, whizzes and whirrs, squeaks, honks, gusts, rumbles, wheezes and rattles.

The light leaks through, not just light,
presence, all the windows coming in through your window.

The others snore, talk in their sleep, ("Take off your shoes!") take up the bed. Join them again and you might wake them and then they will want what they want--always thirsty.

The bed creaks. Mattress springs sproing. The pillows are hard, or squishy.

It's just a little too warm.

Dinner was a chemistry experiment.
It's still bubbling. Foul barbecue sauce--
So much for comfort food.
Mouth tastes like medicine.

A plane flies overhead...

Soon the birds will start singing.
Yes, there they go.

I'm a giant tonight,
stretched out in a chair from the 70s (and one feels it)
ribbons of red, flies can smell it,
white face and ankles,
closed eyes, a droopy expression.

Universe, I breathe you.

You have exhausted me, extracted from me
at last; now, at last
you will let me
sleep.

In a half-round room, the air cooler thunders and drones.
Someone snores gently, someone else shifts restlessly, now and then.

The day was hot until a downpour came.
The roof is still standing.

This is a poem about an uncomfortable, unremarkable day.
A day of love, a small child.
Another day of married truce.
A day of distant familiarity, distant warmth, fading and waning,
trembling hands reaching
into the closet for the bandaids.
A day of impatience
mostly set aside,
leaving room for hope
to re-enter,
with its needles
stabbing slowly,
hour after hour,
maddeningly...

So then hope is set aside,
forcefully.
The needles continue anyway, though dulled.
One does not sleep, as usual.
The little child sighs, and shifts; sheets rustle.
The drone intones.

I remember the mirror and color that once kept me company; I can see it there outlined in the dark.

Through the window, a line of lights in nearby windows.
There are those awake in the light, and those like me, awake in the dark.

All is well, well enough, all will be well.
All is distressed, rough heart, looking up at the dark,
the great absence, which has
generously filled this leaky, dented cup
time and time again--from time to time.

I have a path, again, at last.
My youth leaks away.
I drink from the cup of love--it keeps me awake--
and it isn't long before my mouth
finds something missing.

So I write a rough poem.

There was a man, my patron saint--
I twanged the strings and we both cringed but then
I couldn't unstrike the sound--
so we kept cringing--well.
Fortunately that's far away now,
and the echoes have faded.

Who I am, who I pretend to be, who I think of myself as, how people seem to see me--these flash in and out,
like card tricks almost. My self-belief is probably
the least real of them all, though made up of truth.

The tide ebbs now (yet still pregnant with current) but
only one thing has changed: I no longer despair.
The earth's call to my body now is natural.

And now the time for thought has ended,
taken away by the little child.

how many more times
will you have to break my heart
before it is finally
the right shape

the kiss of death is sweet, swoon black river drowning
afterwards you are not the same, drained
light as a shade and heavy as a stone, or, later, chasm
the rest can see you when you're not there
and you find you fade from the day.
you seduced me by calling me a ghost--
so strange how we know before we know.

once death was both hidden and seen, a higher vision, a kind guide
but now he seems a cheap, deceptive *****... visiting everyone,
staying with no one, leaving behind nothing and less than nothing.

a few weeks after our love affair ended
my husband and I were walking through your neighborhood

and in front of a coffeeshop, holding on to the rail,
an old man had his pants down, ready to poo

and the customers looked on over their late night coffees through the large glass windows, expressionlessly

once out of earshot, he and I giggled wildly
as I asked "do you still think it would be glamorous to live downtown?"

I don't remember what he said,
I was thinking in passing of what the old man felt

soon the subway station where you drop off the women
you're sleeping with on their way home

will be awash in cherry blossoms and the scent of a food truck

my husband shakes his head at your seeming prowess,
but a bird in the hand beats two in the bush.

I dreamt you were a **** officer--you know, one of the relatively innocent ones--you aren't of course--even though you couldn't read my face--

I no longer feel you, yet you're frequently in my thoughts, usually on the bus, on your way to another one, talking to me,
and I go through my slim repertoire of ways to nicely say go away

loving you was hard enough;
not loving you,
infinitely harder.

You thought I needed something from you
But we met by the canal in the night
You though I needed something from you
But I didn't need light
You thought I needed something from you
But you gave it to me
From your chest coursed all the words and sweetness of loss and life
The message I needed to move on to the next world
And though I never saw your face (in that dark)
I won't forget.

dear one
already you're
becoming no one

and I adjust
to yet another
kind of loneliness

the many memories
of your face inspire
faint longing and
a shiver of dread

somewhere you
go about your day
and there our joy's at most
a dissipating footnote
of confused regret

Eros is madness,
but madness isn't Eros.

Love makes worlds
give birth.

You are the dream of a dream.

My love can dream better.

Be what you like.

You're no dream of mine,
with your gift of backwards
running
time.

And if you're guided by guilt rather than love
then think on your hands, which touched me
under false
pretenses.

As they will the next one, and the next.

I won't paralyze your pleasure
seeking with truth--God, *****
what you will--

How can I really condemn your half-
truths and your weaknesses, It's
you that said of others "We all
do our best, that's not enough,"
it wasn't I.

Fool yourself if you like.

I'd rather lose you and keep truth
--much rather.

it's a second body sometimes,
a kind of chandelier of eczema,
tumbling from my shoulders
like a ragged royal robe,
white, shining, drifting scales

and this time I wear it
as a familiar dress,
put on me or
grown on me,
a lifeless moss,
scabs without passion,
drooping, dragging,
not reaching far,
not covering, not enobling

for in the deep sky where my soul lives
I've found an island to touch on,
an island filled with a swirling climbing hole
which is a road in time.

and I keep flying up to the surface,
surface of what I can hardly say,
to feel the wind (or what) buffet
and whip us back and forth
on the edge.

somehow you're there on the island too
yet you're not here, are you?
you don't know that you're there,
you don't know that it's there.
Only I've found its rocks,
that say "Yes" when touched,
the road that flows.

And so I wear this ragged dress,
not quite white,
showing and engrossing all,
and I can't help but stoop.
I slouch around my soul in prayer,
to stay close to it.
and if it hurts, it hurts.
I can bear it.

Some of us have the luxury of vulnerability,
sweet, but ripe
for invasion and colonization, or simply
a day of pillaging here and there.

Others are hard and dry, knowing, already been there before,
already having tried.

Others are keen-eyed, looming over,
tasting it already on their tongues in anticipation,
the fragments of words rippling over the edge,
watching your eyes and your squirms and your sighs,
seeking the entrance to groans and writhing--
or the hall of sorrows, well-locked ossuaries, or sky gardens of private joys.

Some of us know what's what, this goes here and that goes there,
like it or not, know when to stop, now, early, soon,
the knife cuts
here,
in the fruit,
to pierce the skin and separate the skin and the flesh and the pit,
nevermind what it was, now it is something else,
more purposeful in the mouth,
and while once it was the seed of a tree to climb in the sky,
now it is something new and so we will grasp it, display it
and eat it.

No more missives of ordinary agony.
Control, control, tighten your belt,
and your lips, and your eyes,
and your smiles.
Hide your hands beneath your thighs.
Let them descend to your depths if they like
and in the meantime, keep it hidden,
pulsing, private,
let it bloom into a garden
in another world, that they can't yet see
and when they do, they won't know
what it means, that the water awakening and speaking in that garden
was the water of moments and secrets for them (that they could have had,
but instead, the other world has)

What a lovely walk I'm on
as long as I manage not to fall
down these pits and
cracks in the path.

And I, too, would give you the round
path of my love, without end,
but instead I can only offer that of time,
shattered and not endless,
though grand and
sweet just the same.

If my hand and my will were one and the same
I would reweave the strands of fate
and bring you to me in your sleep, in your light,
and here on a lazy day our minds would
play and delight and create.

My will however is only in my feet, so far,
with their certainty and their guesswork,
their endurance, their finding
and their leaving behind.

the theme of this love is ghosts
as it shivers by the sill.

what keeps us here, our grey shadows,
but our torn souls from the air.

loss echoes back for the ghost is lost
because of all the ghost lost and lost

sometimes one emerges and visits,
shifting from the emptiness, bringing thrilling chills

and sometimes I find I am the one
disappearing into the grey.

I am
the balance point
at the center of
a vast universe—
whooping with complexity
and groaning with emptiness.
And how absurd to see me
standing there,
powerless in an excess of power—
my only fulcrum
within me as I take a deep breath
and whisper, implore, reason, soothe
the great, uneven immensities
to be calmed,

and I dissolve my consciousness
into placelessness
so that I may place myself at the center of each
zone of complexity, each expanse of emptiness,
and center each millimeter within itself,
so that all this universe is a universe of balance,
continuously shifting yet continuously balanced,
her foot in absolute certainty on the path,
her body all containing,
the void her nourishing heart,

the enormity neither ordinary,
nor frightening,
nor any one thing,
but to see the consciousness in formlessness—
looking back at me—
all creating,
(and yet created, reflecting,) and yet
giving me
such power.

I hold a heart in my hands--
mine or yours, it hardly matters.
It's a cup of sweet pain--
sweet because it contains
a new world in each
potential swirling drop.
Sweet because we
can taste each world.
And the pain is just
a sharpening, in this moment,
of memories-- of our longing
for this new world-- for birth--
to take what is now real, but hidden,
and let it ripple and be unveiled--
this world hidden in our hearts,
too big, it aches because
it is ready, pressing against
its hidden containment--
we may not hold it in too long--

Life carries on with its own force,
seen or unseen, the new world emerges
in love from the old, warm and slowly scarred--
one new and ripe with life and will,
the other worn and wise, ready
to go quiet--where it will vanish,
covered and concealed, dissolved
then secretly congealed, gathering a secret pulse
and vibrant eye, to once again--for the first time
in all of time--emerge and be revealed--

Our hearts seem like vessels
but they are constantly transforming from old to new,
from hidden to emergent to present. We have
no one heart,
yours or mine, it hardly matters,
but a constant, murmuring emergence,
an ever exploring meaning.
Here in our heart
a spring rises from its endless roots
and meets the air of our awareness--
rippling, shining, silently singing.

Let our hands and eyes be midwives, then,
when needed.
We can ease these transformations
with a little understanding.
Let our eyes and hands
love the hidden heart
and guide its travels
for we are hearts and more,
wide minds, capable, some times,
of comprehending--peacefully--
the sometimes searing
duality
and finding in its balance
a way to, briefly,
crucially,
meet its blade
with peace--
to use the energy of dissolving
and the energy of emerging
simultaneously
to transform
one more
moment.

let me bare my soul
if I can find it
it was just here
last year
then it sank
back down
in the folds
I think you saw it last
passing down the hall
you said you saw a ghost
and so you introduced yourself to me
did you see which way she went

I take it all back. All of it--I'll eat every word. Every contradiction, every idea, every excuse, every truth. I'll eat it all. I'll turn myself outside in and start again--

only a fool
would sit here, aching
for nothing.

night after night after
day after
day.

and I can't stop
thinking about the one thing
that hints at what may
one day
be.

There's a kind of love, calm, open, merciful,
a strong and tired and peaceful mother for the aching soul,
that brings more pain
then lets it go again
in waves.
As long as we remember to let a broken heart
be an open heart,
its waterfall from the tear
falling upon each gnawing thought
and giving everything
the open heart
can give.

You've kept me awake another night,
meanwhile you slept soundly another night.
I really must
find something else
to think about.
Someone that thinks me back.

Here I'll set down
the rules I'm to follow,
thin threads of
highway lines.
Don't write,
don't ask,
don't invite.
You've said enough, wait
for the reply.
Let him work.
Don't help.
Let him figure you out.
Let him say, "There's something there I want"
"That I can't find in anybody else."
"I must learn how to reach it."
"I must get it for myself."
Let him think about you,
in the middle of the night.
Let him reach out.
Let him reveal himself,
not so casually, not so easily,
let him want more than
easy warmth.
And if he does not
then let him be.
When you're ready for your favorite mind
you'll find it.

Teacup,
Ornament,
Galaxy.
Do not scorn me in your sagacity.
Do not be too nice either way--
you confuse me.
Bell,
Card,
Bird on the wing.
You must suffer to be beautiful.
Not alone--
suffer for me.

Thinking of you,
but the things I’m thinking are really too complicated to be worth sharing,
and anyway the more I think the more I keep ending up back where I started,
and while I’d like to share something with you every time I try writing it down it seems kind of pointless,
so here’s a card to say that I’m thinking of you
which is sort of ambiguous if you think about it
but the picture on the cover helps with that.

compelling

I wish I could write you a poem
that said everything in it, in code
but all I have to say is the ordinary
version of everything
which is in itself a kind of code

and in order to say everything
surely I'd have the answer contained within it

I wish that I could have gone on being happy and foolish.

now you and I can't
spark anything
because we've tasted
sadness already and
it's like a wet match

and most nights I don't even mind
only you're the only one who makes me feel
not lonely.

(There's so much you want from me
but I doubt there's one essential thing you need from me
like that.)

I want you to come closer, to be more intimate
but I'm not sure I would like it if you did, or like you so well
and I'm not sure that I like you so well now
although I know that I like you very much, or at least enough
though perhaps I would like you quite a lot if you were happier
which you would be if I loved you of course
and you'd be happy too, for a little while,
if I merely lusted enough, and liked a lot too
but what good is being happy for a little while, or even a long while,
if one simply returns to being gentle, intelligent, dour?
and then, though I know you would love to be loved
and you find me a natural companion, adequately and exceptionally,
I am not sure you like me now as much as one might, or that you will
and that is why I tell you so little of myself
though I wish you would know me better.

the zombie has opinions about nutrition
but lives off of tasty urban debris

the zombie is standing on the beach
whipped by grey
watching the waves roll in high

the zombie is on the computer again--
where nobody knows he's a zombie

the zombie seems to be listening but is looking at his phone

the zombie is not a joiner, so don't be uncool and ask
though he might join and then drop out, which just proves
joining was pointless in the first place

oh definitely the zombie likes to go down

the zombie bites the hand that feeds him

the zombie does not mind poison if it means saving money

the zombie is against bad things.

the zombie is not a sheep.

the zombie is dying of loneliness but can't ever seem to connect.

the zombie is spreading deserts
and drowning deltas.

the zombie is standing up for what's right, on facebook.

the zombie knows that *** is safer than alcohol
and it makes him safer

the zombie feels guilty sometimes but ultimately
not personally responsible.

the zombie is tired--not enough sleep, not enough brains.

the zombie doesn't need you,
he just wants you,
when he sees you.

ahem: the zombie wants you for your mind.

the zombie is free.

the zombie embodies Csikszentmihalyi's state of "Flow."

the zombie may have made you one of his kind,

you will never know because
zombies don't know they're
zombies.

one, no
way, no
wall.
there is no
well, no
we, no
within.
there is no
will, no
with, no
wild.
there is no
would, no
wind, no
wonder.

the bus snaked along beside forested beaches
where old men watched and
when they caught one, shot
the local cats

when we arrived at night
at a peninsula with an array of windblown grey buildings
it seemed cold and bleak: so I laughed
loudly and said "How Puritan!"
to show that we would force our brightness
on this place

one of the boys thought I was here to get married
and have a driving test. I said no,
I'm old enough that I've done both,
driven and loved enough to
feel unsafe with them both.
we found the lights to turn on
and the radio. I went off in search
of the wherewithall to make
liquored tea.

and walking down the wooden hall I longed
for a sweet cat to hold against
my chest.

your side of the bed is filled with books now, though I don't read them
and as for the day when the bottom gives out, it's just a matter of when
and then, and then, we'll see where it goes, this hole

oh ache,
let me praise thee
let my voice rise
and in turn upraise thee
oh ache,
love in disfavor,
flung to the walls
of the heart's many chambers
you possess vision
like a dark pool that speaks
through the mouth of the vessel
in lifetimes or weeks
oh ache,
lost underwater,
wait a little longer
to breathe again.

sitting inside the air loom,
weaving my fingers through the rippling warp,
a little song sung by each traveling strand

and today I've woven a tapestry of fantastical someone
and his warm, calm regard
and the open walls he builds
to complement the light

sitting inside the garden spaceship,
the sky in my eyes and the jungle at my back,
whispering sweet exhalations against the wide windshield

I fly into a story of fantastical someone
and he's climbing over mountains to see what he finds
and his open heart is a mouth and an eye
open and scanning the horizon for a glimpse of a memory of mine

let go of your heart,
let it out of your fist.
let the blood travel in its natural exhilaration.
it knows the way.
(it knows every way.)
look away, let your eyes
rest awhile.
you know the way.
your heart is transforming, transformed
from a pump to a seed,
transforming utterly
into a new being.
grow to the sky.
go coursing forward.
you know the way.
(you know every way.)
rest your voice awhile.
let it change--
let it travel through your body,
let it be transformed.
the love in your heart
can transform worlds
even when
you have covered it utterly
for
it knows the way

night passes
and there's no one to write to
though someone snaps his fingers behind me
and wanders back and forth, picking things up and putting them down
and someone else is sleeping somewhere else
and some others wait in the back of their minds

I'm reclined, hands on the keys
belly sorting, one leg bent to warm cold foot on warm calf
face dissatisfied

he's on his way to sleep will I come
and I'll come and do these things and this is all that I'll do
the objects of life exist and I am not
a part of weaving strands between them to create another
world within a world
I'm alive surviving with my vibrance past
and in the face of winter putting out a
few blossoms last

call me, I'm nowhere
and you might
draw me out of the white
into a point of light

call me, lay out the path
what seems small to you
is a new universe to me

in the night in the dark
i will shape with my hands
a round word
to roll to the underworld.

sleep's wings fan over my face
making a smaller night.

the word rolled away.
now again I'm left
with a small mouth
and dry eyes.
nothing to say nor cry.
once upon a time
I made my own wonders.
now I am
squeezed out between
worlds.

there's a curtained circle that emerges
and sometimes it's one of care and thought
while it can also be one of soft absolute obscurity
and it can be cold, toothy, rasping, devouring
and these are such different kinds of danger

somewhere at the bottom of the sky
is the promise of divine indifference
and I go jumping after it
desperate for the blackness

explain this knife's wound.
gaping and jagged
and, surely,
without cause.
empty, too, look--
inside there is no substance,
only sound, vibration, shuddering,
flickering, shattering, glimmering, deafening

explain this knife's wound.
always secretly my mouth hanging open
in imitation of it.
no words come out though.
if they did it would only be a call
to close up the wound and
suffocate its interior.

explain this knife's wound.
fear on its edge
though no knife.
that was tossed aside long ago
no longer needed
since the wound opens anew
every night.

an ecstasy of snuggles

make no mistake
we look for what's funny
when it's not funny.
we look for the humor
on the edge of despair.
it's always there.
alone, we struggle to survive
though we're fine.
and that endless loneliness
is humorous.

This isn't the poem I came here to write.
I'm circling round it, and will circle
for years.
Not to write a good poem.
Just to find the truth.
So very many facts
yet truth so rare.
I'm circling round it,
and will circle for years.
Circling, soft circling.
Gravity calling, hungrily, for a pair
for another part.
That pull feels true,
but I don't know.
What does it ask in the glass?
Ask, night after night?
For what does it cry?
What

(love)
is enough?

Now this dark pool is quiet,
it hardly drips.
And so we wait here, contemplating,
nervously.
Nothing to say,
little to plan,
less to reveal.
Your private space is safer,
most of the time.
I know that much.
I would lie beside you
and play with your hair
while you drift to sleep
glad that I'm there.
Here, though, who can say
what lies in my dark pool?
Scry if you like and see.
It will tell you of something distant,
not what's within.
Always hiding, disguising,
pregnant with what might be fear.
Elsewhere there are women
with red maps of meaning
coursing through their organs,
veins, muscles and bones--
My heart's as alive as the underworld,
weirdly irrepressible,
eternally mourning.
Still there are roads here too,
and those who know some parts of the way.
I want to do better, be better--
not collapse on the instrument
but touch it one key at a time,
controlled and skillfully wild.
Must remember,
must remember,
I am still alive.

late at night
when you want to sleep
and you can't
bear to surrender
press the strange button
disguised in your remote control
and your little television will flicker
with an odd and greyish picture
and you can hear my voice
and see another moment for a world--
pearls of wood tinkling
a wild woman hacking through a jungle of words
uncovering swirls
of teacups and curls
and tiny grey horses
sprouting antlers of moss
and dancers and jokers
and portraits of loss
each one of these threaded
through the path of destruction
she's hacking her way through
your television
while murmering
oh so quietly

then turn off the image
and lie down and rest
reassured by the knowledge
that out there in the world
there's something just as deranged
as you feel in your chest
and it's there as a gift of
tiny horses in teacups
for you if
you can find it.

somehow you
still have a hand
on my heart,
though what part I
don't know--
you are
passionate yet
disinterested,
sudden and
deceptively
straightforward--
yet I
know you
somehow
past your
rigidity
and can't help
but want to
caress your
lonely
impulses.

It was just as I said, cut flowers
making a mess.
Should have let it die on the vine.
No kiss. Just a book
possessed but not read.
Just as I said.