I have no faith in these hills.
They are too green, the colors to deep.
At night when the fireflies dance under
almost-ripe grape vines tangled in earth,
I wait for them to disappear.

I can feel myself forgetting the smell
of the sun-dried roses and half-cleaned out fire places
the smoke of wood and ash,
the strange bugs I find on my damp towels.  

I can taste the blue of those far away hills
smell the red of the ancient brick of
faraway conclaves of ancient cities.
But I already forget their names.

I watch the rain tumble down the hills covered with cobblestones.
it's midas's touch deepening the colors of the stones, the fossils of labor.
I listen to the sounds a mountain makes when it cries, nursing it's million year wounds.
The green river never stops pouring through it.
But I can't remember the cause of its sorrow.

But I know the cause of mine.
I will leave these hills.
And paint them into a postcard.
or a poem.

i was your favorite ghost.
you'd visit me once a week
throw some roses
read some proses
allow some tears to leak

you no longer visit me
not once a month or at all
i sit here waiting
my mind debating
why I allowed myself to fall


then one day you bring her to me
she smells like butterscotch
i comprehend
why we had to end
but i can't bear to watch

still, i am just a ghost
a graveyard fantasy
and you have love
someone to think of
who lives in reality

i feel like measureless music
a throng of vowels
living in-between fog and smoke
like almost black and white
the string of a far away kite

my mind has become stuffed up
and all the world tastes distant
and slightly curdled.

like a telescope
focused on the landscape of a palm.

I think you're dead.
You haven't replied to my letters, my calls, my emails, my texts,
my body language, my thoughts, my wishes,
the almost-silent tickings of my heart as it beats closer and closer to where you are.

I didn't want to write this poem, because I didn't think people would believe me.
I thought I should make it a book, or a story, or a newspaper article.
Man Leaves Woman With No Reason, Probably Dead.

We met on park benches, and  under bridges.
In abandoned train stations and  church gardens named after poets.  
We never went out to dinner, or back to each others apartments.
We were too much that combination of whimsy, fear and patience.

I don't know where you live, or who your friends are.
We are ghosts meeting together always passing through each other
never touching.  

I always knew you would leave.
I didn't know how, but I thought I would.
I imagined fights, or the slow dying,
our affection like the tired kidneys of a person
who could no longer filter all the conflicting elements out of
themselves.
I imagined reason.

You only gave me mystery.

Before you left, you said you had to go do something.
You left before I could ask what. You ran away.
The sound of your feet against the pavement like one-handed clapping,
like a tree falling in the woods with nobody to hear it.

Without your return you made me into nobody,
and turned us into a fantasy,
into a poem.
That no one will believe.

if you're reading this the worst has happened.

a thousand bombs have exploded on the surface of the sea
causing a giant tidal wave to consume the coasts.
or maybe the scientists tangled one to many times
with mysteriously sensual black holes.

Or maybe the whole world didn't end,
but just ours.

If you're reading this:

My sand-paper quirks rubbed you down into sea-glass,
and all your barbs were reduced to arts and crafts quips.
And then you did something drastic to sharpen yourself,
but only succeeded and drawing blood from my paper-skin.

If you're reading this:
My eyes didn't shine as quicksilver as you thought they would.
And I really never understood, but managed to trick you into thinking that somehow I could.
But one day you asked me a question and I gave the wrong answer, and you knew.
Knew exactly how I lied to you.

If you reading this:
I never really loved you at all.
and you knew it.

I do not want your love.
It's too large for my hands to carry,
too slippery for my lips to say
And if you gave it to me
I'd only give it back away.

What I want are your little smiles,
that like tinsel decorate the minutia, the minutes, the moments.
I want them anytime and every-time.
to brand them and keep them and call them mine.

I do not want your desire.
It's too ugly to look at,
and too persistent to bear.
and if you put your hand in mine
I would pretend it wasn't there.

I want our lives to be like train-tracks
that never touch, well, never much.
and far away seem to converge, embrace
brought together by an optical illusion's almost-grace.

I do not want your trust.
It's too delicate to display
and too complex to comprehend
And when I gave you mine,
you sold it to a friend.

I want my leaving to be like loosing a balloon.
with a moment when your eyes slowly rise,
rise to the crests of cirrus and you sigh,
sigh softly, tenderly, but oh-so audibly out-loud,
and then grab for the string, through the crowd--
but I am gone, gone into the rivers of cloud.

I do not want that sigh,
I /need/ it for it is your due.
It shows that you will miss me
as I have long missed you.

It hurts not that you let me go,
although you did.
It hurts not that you sold me,
although you didn't even bid.

I don't mind that you love another,
although with every kiss I know.
I don't mind the lies you tell,
although every day they grow.

It hurts not that you hurt me,
although with every word you do.
All that hurts is that I love you
and that you don't love me too.