Unsure if it was
Me or my lips
That betrayed
Your heart

Bump bump bang bang
the world goes numb.
Numb from the cold.
Hearts aren't for love anymore,
just blood.
Blue blood like the rest of us,
we can't get enough oxygen to make it red.
The drugs do it for us now,
do everything.
We barely have to think,
we barely have to move.
Drugs do our jobs, we used to joke,
but our bodies are still there.
We just aren't sure where exactly
there
is. It seemed like yesterday we were alive--
we think.
We sort of remember warmth.
We sort of remember laughing.
We sort of remember nostalgia,
a memory for years past and
lessons learned from previous failures.
We remember once when a man
said he would do something and did it,
gratis,
out of the goodness of a loving heart.

Hearts aren't for love anymore.
Just blood that spills.
We see it all the time now.
We know what it looks like
dried and cracked,
stained on our clothes.
We don't run from blood anymore
because we understand that
soon
our blood will leave our hearts
and stain our carpet or street.
This does not scare us because
we understand it as inevitable.
We remember when death was frightening.
We remember when blood was uncommon.

We remember the sun.
Clouds, gray and bleak,
rain putrescence down every day
on the homes that used to be warm.
We sort of remember warmth.
We remember feeling
things,
any things.
Temperature, moisture, emotion.
Love.
We remember until the bump bump bang bang-

Oi, you der!
Oy tink you 'ave a problem
Oy tink you and me
'ave tings to seddle

Been moonts now we 'aven' gobbed,
Moonts now you stoi shuh in
It's doone now, lahd.
We ar' doone.
Cheers.

What happens after we tumble down?
The fast falls are easy fixes.
We remember clearly where we were at the start,
we can just climb back on the other side of the crevasse.

But when the decline is gradual,
we have no clue we’ve finished falling until we look around,
confused at the immense walls towering up,
penning us in and obscuring the stars.

We don’t remember what it’s like above,
where we started.
We don’t remember starting
nor how we got down here,
into this dry valley,
so dark and disorienting.

We only know,
with sudden urgency,
that this is not where we want or ought to be.

Panicked, we scramble to find a way out immediately,
needing only the rescue of now.
With each passing minute,
each now becoming then,
the panic intensifies.
If we let it consume us,
we get lost more deeply and wholly;
we struggle more and more to find the right way,
we ignore options in search of the one path we think is
right.

But there is never just one path.

Even after finding a way out,
the challenge has just begun.
We must realize when we are back up to where we started.
But we don’t remember where that is,
we don’t recall the feeling of that height or the look of the stars.
Stop too early and the world will never be as
bright and airy
as it was before.
Push to far,
and the path never ends.

That final point,
that place that’s just right
just where we started,

That is what we call home.

I can't sleep. I don't want to sleep. I don't know which it is but it's happening, now and infinitesimally forever my eyes are open and not shutting down for the day, not recharging, not doing anything but waiting for something to see and perceive and solve, a problem to appear before them and present itself begging to be taken in and toyed with like a Rubik's cube. I don't want to sleep because sleep is giving up on the day, it's saying the day is over and it's giving up the chance to accomplish the innumerable tasks yet to be accomplished before I sleep that I haven't done and won't do if I sleep now, if I lie down in that bed and pull covers over my head and let myself drift away. I don't want to drift away, can't let it happen, can't let go of control over really the only thing I have left to control which is when and if I go to sleep so I don't, I force myself not to, I expunge the records of thought from my head into a text box and hope that the soft rattling that had droned there softens because now after all of this my eyelids get heavy and I may have to let sleep win, give up the day, defeated, fight again tomorrow because I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting, fighting against the minute tedium tripping along, fighting against transcendental ecclesiastical endlessness, tired of fighting when all I do is get bloodied and bruised, tired of fighting when I can't win because I'm tired. Rest now. Fight again tomorrow.

She's a cold one

The kind of cold
that drives deeply

Frigid and
lingeringly painful
Invisible but tangible scars

She's a cold one who
never knows just what she does
but does it anyway
unknowingly cruel

With teeth that seek
and find the flesh,
wounds with depth
that never completely heal
that have a memory

Some wounds know where and
how to hurt you
again again again
never excruciating in
the same way
but unavoidably agonizing

She's a cold one who persists
who hopes the coat protects
who doesn't see the frostbite
who is an unwitting succubus
who poisons the soul with frost
who makes warmth
fade, dwindle, disappear

I wish I were six again
if only to beg and plead
my mother to read me a story before bed.  

I could read on my own when I was six,
but I just wanted to hear another voice say
goodnight
to everything in the little bunny’s room.
I found it funny when my mother said
goodnight to the moon,
and the mush,
and the red balloon.  
It was soothing, relaxing after a long day,
however exhausting a day
in the life of a
six-year-old can be.
I would be on the bottom,
my brother on the bunk above me.  
Mom would stand by the ladder,
using it as a book rest.  
Or we would sit on the floor with her between us,
looking at the pictures as she read.  
The green and orange of the room,
blue and white of the bunny and his pajamas,
the red of the balloon,
colors etched into our minds.

When I was thirteen
and finally moved into my own room,
I considered painting it green
out of respect and admiration
for the book
and now, when I walk at night,
I stare at the moon.

On a Monday I saw a very full moon.  
It looked larger than normal,
brighter too
and I noticed something in the moonlight.  
A painting, attached to some metal box
on the side of the road by liquid nails.
I don’t know why the painting meant anything to me.
It was simple,
a man drinking a cup of tea.  
He was old and haggard, grayed a bit.  
But there was a corner, a solid background.  
A wall behind the tea-drinking man,
bright red,
standing out from the rest of the image.  
I took the painting,
pried it off with the force of memory.
it hangs in my home,
that bright bit of red wall adding
a needed splash of color to
mundane rental property mauve.

Though I wish that splash were green.

Purple flowers fall
Soft color reminds of her
Lilac bush, old yard

When it comes (and it
Will) You will not survive, or
You will, but alone.

Crush it
she said
handing me her heart

Like this?
I asked
showing her mine

I love deeply, recklessly
Though internally.
Love never forced outward
Hidden, held, disguised.

Mask obscures the question
If there is no recipient
Can the feeling be true
Or is it just ethereal?

Floating spectral sunset
Apparition half manifested
Ghost of perhaps something
Unfinished, vague, grasping.

Love poetry is not about
The joining of man and woman-
****** or otherwise.
That is too simple for love poetry.
It’s about separation
Longing for
Searching and waiting.
In the longing lies the divine.
In desire is faith-
Reaching for something
You know is there
Reaching back for you
Like a hopeful horizon,
No proof that her arms are
Outstretched towards you.
But you feel it,
Know it somehow,
Viscerally,
Can’t help but know it
In a way that others don’t
And never will.
The faith of reciprocation.

You are special for having been
Touched
By this beautiful agony.

Have you sipped a good old fashioned?
A perfectly crafted cocktail
One that costs 12 or 15 dollars
And is made by a man with a mustache?
It's sweet at first, almost cloyingly so
Sugary and malty and fruity.
Underneath the sweet is something sharp
The alcohol, the citrus, the bite.
Not sour, just bright and crisp.
It's a pleasing drink, dancing across the palate.
But if you pay close attention,
If you really focus,
There are the bitter notes, the astringent moments
The ones that pucker and hurt.

A good old fashioned hides the harshness,
Like the memories of a love that walked away.

Just a trace
Reminding that once
Not long ago



This void had substance

Book holds for Reader
The secret to divinity,
Between ink and fiber
Lies the universe.
Sustaining itself by
Luring others inside,
Book fools Reader
That escape is within
Then entraps them in the
Fantasy that life could be
Like Reader's favorite Book.

But Book lies to Reader.

Great literature is proof
Against God.
For God created World,
Author and Ink and Paper-
Reader and Book.
But Reader wants to escape World
    (created by God)
And travel into Book
    (created by Author)

His creation has outdone Him
And has been outdoing him
For centuries.

...the last conversation
...the lack of apology
...the silence at your questions
...the love she said wasn't quite enough
...the kind of wedding dress you thought she might wear
...the times she didn't talk
...the times she didn't want to see you
...the times she hurt you
...the love you had
...the signs of love she rejected

...everything
...every moment
...every tear
...every joy
...all of it.
Remember all of it.

She, consisting of
he and s as in **** and shine.  

She is love and hate and frustration,
she is aggravation
she is admiration.  Is
she the complete, meaning
he is waiting to be completed, or does
she need
he to be fully
she?  It must be both, because
he does not feel whole without
she, and
she is not all
she without
he.  

She is just s waiting for he.  
He is just there waiting for
she to take a part of and be a part of.  
She and he could go on, but shall we just see
she alone?  
She is a quiet one with the hush built in.  
She makes a pucker or a sucker, and a grimace or a grin.  
She is kind to the mouth and good on the ear, soft and warm and smooth.  

She is good whiskey.  
She can get he drunk like good whiskey.  Drunk on
she,
he will stumble around running into things,
he will fall down, and
he will need help up.  
She will always be there unlike the whiskey to pick
he up to carry
he home.  
He is nothing without
she.  
He is just he waiting to be within
she.  Of course.  

He is short and childish, blunt and stubby.  
She is long and elegant, sensual and curvy.  
She rolls out of the mouth with grace,
he is shoved out with a huff and a puff.  

She is the word that makes
he be.

Keeping her in my heart and mind
so tightly bound
restricts how much I
(represented by spectral oscillation)
can fluctuate, flow, reach the natural peaks
or valleys
and then recover.

My sound is in one range frequency
ignoring the warmth of the high
and depth of the low
ignoring the bass.

My music is dosed in silence.
I must elongate my spectrum
amplify my wave pattern.

Don't hate the instrument
Remove the gum from the frets.
I am strumming something
I don't know how to get music from.

Vibrating is never wrong.

There’s a dream at night, of me floating up in thin heights
with clouds trying far too hard to catch up.  
This dream is sad, it hovers on horizons  
Because I’m grounded for now, my wings haven’t come yet.  
They’re lost in the mail, and I don’t have courage to hunt them.  

You see I’m scared of up there,
the density of air seems to fall short of supporting
my heavy disposition.  
My skin is fair and it may go right past crispy
with less atmosphere between me and the glowing bright.  

The twin orbs above my dream-self rotate in and out
but there’s a shared look of hate on their beautiful faces.  
They don’t want me here, this sky is their front yard.  
They’ve posted a sign “No Solicitors Allowed”
but I’m selling my dream, this heart to the highest bidder
to find my flight, my cowardly departure.  

The sun is mad, ******* at his potential neighbor, a smaller sort,
sun is tired of sister moon taking so much room.  
Perhaps life without the cold ashen face of her sibling would improve.  
This works for me, as I said at the beginning this is a dream at night,
one that just may be fulfilling if I decide to fly, if my wings arrive,
but I’m still so scared of the heights.

Are like carbon
And the difference between coal and diamond

One shines,
The other burns

The room creaks in
longing sighs,
knowing that, soon
I won't come back

The Sage is short and compose of circles.
Flattened circles, not ovular.
A roundness that is not portly nor lean
Just round, simply circular, simply his shape.

The Sage speaks with contrasting sharpness,
A voice angular, particularly his laugh. Cacklingly
Angular. Unexpected laughs seem demonic.
But The Sage is wise and sometimes even holy.

The Sage talks about fuel to push young artists.
Graduate schools, challenges, gasoline to blaze and extinguish.
I consider the role of Serious Artist, capitalization so telling
And am curious if that is me, if it could ever be.

The Sage knows but wants me to search
He knows but isn’t telling
You’ll have to wait, the Sage says.
I’ll show you, soon, when you stop searching so hard.

I love the way you look in the moonlight that filters in through the window
(I love the simple fact that you are here with me in the moonlight)

Your hair smells amazing
(I inhale you every chance I get in every state you are in and hold it in my lungs because I want it to intoxicate me)

Your hair looks fantastic
(it floats downward from the top of your brilliant mind and cascades like your thoughts, pours like your words in our half-drunk midnight conversations)

Your smile is so pretty
(when you smile at me it lights me up and makes me feel, if even for an instant in this time of my life that is so shambled and broken, whole)

Can I have a hug?
(hold me, embrace me, envelope me, if only to let me know you are real)

Let’s go to bed
(where I can confuse physical love with emotional, take refuge in confirming our relationship with *** because it’s easier than risking my whole trust, easier than leaving myself bare before you with the certainty that one day, eventually, you will tear my heart out and crush it)

No, that’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

I don’t think I can make it tonight
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

Can’t we talk?
(I get it, you backed away because I did but I’m going to blame you because I can’t blame myself, don’t you see? Can’t you see how utterly self-absorbed I am but also woefully lacking self-confidence? I refuse to share any of this with you, I can’t let you know it but if you saw it I’d acknowledge it, at least I think I will, and you know me so well so why can’t you see it)

I don’t think we should see each other anymore
(please, please, please make me realize how utterly foolish I am. Please slap me and scream at me)

Say something
(your total lack of reaction destroys me more than anything)

You look really pretty
(so beautiful, majestic, magnificent and I love you. I love the tears I have made you cry so silently and I hate myself so much for this moment because of that. I love you and only now as you walk away do I realize it)

Fine. Go.
(the ease with which you leave is painful and will linger for years)

…
(Please stop walking, please. I was wrong. Please.)

I plan on sleeping into oblivion into Armageddon into the end of the world.  
The earth shakes all around me as the sky falls in brimstone and rains sulfur and right now I think I see the angel of death in the distance.
I am not sure what it would look like though this vision is chilling me to the core.  
The molten core of this rock of life now death is rising up and overtaking the trees yet somehow I remain alive somehow I am not engulfed in the holy and divine flame of this apocalypse but I am sweating like a pig.  

I think I smell bacon.  

The sizzling of the flesh of those around me reminds me of bacon.
I think that’s why Hashem is ******.  
I know the smell of bacon.
I am not religious but the death and chaos around me and the angel of death above me and the burning sky and charred trees and buildings and bodies around me have given me a slight change of heart.  

Help me holy one!

I renounce my sins and blasphemy and beg forgiveness at Your all-powerful feet staring at Your omnipotent toenails and noticing a little fungus and thinking that we all have our flaws, even the Alpha and the Omega, the Almighty God that is prayed to day and night.  

If I could hear all the prayers in the world right now as we crumble into oblivion what
would they say?
I’m sorry Lord for what I have done Forgive me Lord for my indiscretions I was good, God, why have you done this to me what is Your plan Almighty tell me ******, why must I, your humble servant die at your hand because of the evils of others!  and I hear the reversal of fortunes.
The pious screaming at You for answers and the blasphemous like myself whimpering for forgiveness and the strong become weak and the weak become weaker and the terrible whine of hot steel bending and the crackling of flesh that reminds me of bacon and I remember now that I shouldn’t know that smell but forget among the cries of flesh and steel and concrete wood plastic explosions cacophony chaos bliss finality the end of days is on a
Tuesday

and I love it because I have always loathed
Tuesdays.  

Tuesdays
have always had a putrid green sky and a certain unpleasant odor lingering in the thick juicy air an odor not unlike fertilizer that has somehow gone bad and I wonder how **** goes bad because fertilizer is just that, ****, right?  
And that smell begins to flood my nose again as I hear the sizzle of flesh burning again this time
closer and louder and real and I begin to feel the heat all around me and my time for epiphany is now over.  
That fertilizer smell, that rancid **** demonic hellish smell is none other than my own burning flesh, none other than a warning sign that the end would come on a
Tuesday,
that most loathsome and evil of days, the worst of the week.
Tuesday.  
Insufferable intolerable
Tuesday
with your rancid **** burning flesh hell spawn demon smell, a smell only found in the bowels of the underworld and gym locker rooms, your rancid green brown sky, a color to match your smell in the thick sticky juicy air that never leaves.

Tuesday,
you evil being you devil you lost soul you destructor I hate you now more than ever as the sizzle crawls up my body and engulfs my nose and for that I am thankful because I can no longer smell that evil putrid narcotic smell of death but it stops before my eyes so I can bear witness to the end of days to the last whimper of the earth as it is consumed by fire and hear with what is left of my ears the eternal silence of this beautiful Apocalypse and begin only slightly as the bacon sizzle crawls up my forehead
in silent reverie
to love

Tuesday.

We fall apart
When our faults fall in line
And make a chasm.

We are too similar, you and I,
Too much alike in our failures
Too quiet when we should shout.

We fall apart
But cushion one another
Knowing it will be our last touch.

I asked her what to write about.
“Me,” she said.
“You? What should I write about you? What could I write about you?”
“Tell me how much you love me.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing I can think of seems like enough.”
At that she smiled and looked up at me. She's shorter than me, but most are. I like it. I can rest my head on top of hers when I take her into my arms.
“Tell me about the snow.”
“It sparkles like the tears of a betrayed lover.”
“That's so sad.”
“I don't like the snow. I was sledding once when I was 6 and I broke my leg. I don't like the snow.”
She made that face that means she's so sorry, and I know she means it. She's honest like that.
“Tell me about the city.”
“Which one?”
“Any.”
“It's too bright for me.”
“That's it?”
“That's all I could think of. Give me time, I can find more.”
“You've got till sun-up.”
It was 2 a.m. and we were lying in bed.  It was summer, and I had time to write.  During the school year I never did.  Too much grading, too much reading.
“Tell me about me,” I said.
“Sometimes I think about the future, and sometimes I think about the past, and every time I think about them and you aren't there I feel sad.”
“That's so cliche.”
“I'm no writer.”
“That's obvious.”
“Oh stop.”
She sat up on the bed and slapped me on the back. She hit hard, or as hard as she could, but she couldn't get much force behind it. I pushed her down, and fell beside her. The ceiling texture sent shadows in the valleys, and the peaks seemed higher. The only light was from my desk lamp. It reflected off the arms of the typewriter and on to the sparse decorations of the room.
“Tell me what you're afraid of,” she said.
“Myself.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. I create what I am afraid of, mostly. The snow didn't break my leg, but I make myself hate the snow. Fear the snow? It's all a creation.”
“You're good at creating.”
“Too good, I guess.”
“Tell me a story.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind.”
“I knew a man once, years ago, who told me a good story about love and life. He said that when he was about our age, he knew a girl that he fell in love with. She was a smiling sad one, he called her. The kind of girl that showed everyone a smile, and only a few her tears. She showed him her tears, and that's when he fell in love. And he held her tight and dried her tears, and she fell in love too. I wish I could say they lived happily ever after together, but that isn't true. She went her way and he went his, and they talked on the phone every now and then for a few years then stopped. When they were older and graying, a friend of theirs died. They saw each other again at the funeral, and she was crying again this time too the world, and he held her tight again and dried her tears again and told her 'this is how I fell in love with you the first time.' She laughed and asked 'why?' He thought for a minute, and said 'because when you cried for me I saw you at your worst, and I didn't run away. I stayed strong for you, like I am now. I became a man that day.' And she laughed again. 'Why are you laughing?' He asked. 'Because I fell in love with you that day too. Because you saw me at my worst and I didn't try to hide it. Because I knew you would dry the tears away and make me smile again.' She stopped crying then, and looked him in the eyes, and smiled. He smiled back, and said 'that's the one.' And they left, remembering.”
“Write that story.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“It's not my story to write.”
She moved closer to me and I held her. We stayed silent in the bed until I spoke again.
“The lights replace the stars they block out, and sparkle in the sky with their own beauty.”
“What?”
“That's what I have to say about the city.”

When darkness come, in darkness we pretend
And only if the light begins to rise
Then fortune's wounds so swiftly shall we mend
And thus we stand against our slow demise.

These demons fly within our blackened souls.
So too do angels flit inside our hearts.
Against our evil wills we build up shoals
And hope to holy help no hope departs.

Thus ****** battles rage inside us all,
A fatal flaw for which there is redress.
We pray for love to catch us when we fall,
Forgive us for these sins we must confess:

Tis us, you see, ourselves whom love must fight-
Our dark, our self that tries to block the light.

The fact of your interest in me is proof
That you must be crazy,
Or I have been hiding myself well.

That fact, the one of your interest in me
Puzzles, confounds, I can't accept the logic
Do you want this lumpy mess?

Were I honest, my own faults cry loudest to me
And that you can't hear them, or can but ignore them-
I feel claustrophobic in your open mind.

Today is the birthday
of a love of my life.
Not 'the' (implying singular) because
love is never singular,
it takes two.

Today is the birthday of
a love through my life
who flies (implying graceful) stories from feathers,
who transforms planks of wood into
platforms and pulpits and potential.

Today his birthday, whose children are
the first romantic tragedy
the depths of a suffering soul
the honest daughter, punished
the honorable man, framed
the *** made out of the bottom
the poetry, carefully manipulated
from our once bare lonesome world.

Today is his birthday and his last day,
his life as circuitous as his shrine,
the citadel to his soul.
Today I celebrate and mourn him,
a love in my life since our first quiet encounter
in a bright second floor classroom.
I knew nothing of our tangled future
but this: he spoke, I listened and through the
tunnel of years between us the message stayed strong.

Today is his birth and death (not quite dead
but not alive) and I mourn for not knowing him
sooner or fuller and I celebrate
for knowing him still and yearning,
struggling to understand his children.