Remember when you first told me?
How you told me a story about a comic strip first,
Then you uttered the words through your teeth.
"I love you."
Do you remember the electricity of that moment?

I do.
I treasure the memory,
And the memories of all the times you told me after.
How we would laugh at its newness,
And the feelings that came with it.

I remember how those words could light up the dark,
Like the days when my mood turned stratus and murky.
You would stand close and whisper in my ear,
And still, we could laugh.

But now, when the night has come,
I remember how you say it less and less.
I remember you stopped laughing
That you don't seem mystified by it anymore,
And when I stand close and whisper in your ear,
You dimly mutter back,  "you too."

When all this is over,
I can say
That I remember
The beginning of the end.
And still,
I'll love you.

I watched you always
through layers of sea
salted satin and holy oil.

The face of a churning
stomach, the incense of your fingers
and the hailed
embrace of the cathedral. Kneeling on
the floor of the ocean or a prayer bench.

You lead me, always,
through the tunneled,
or the flicker of rounded
sounds and  whispered pews.

Through clouded words  
and anointed promises.
It's cold enough to taste you
in this storm of twenty something verses, hailed
and poured from mouth to mouth.

A shaking hand
and the crumbling of bread:
something outstretched and sinful.
Perversions of a theme.  

You were my
mask and I wore you
out, with time and mercury
poisoning.

In the drenching warmth I see you now:
A song and a purpose.
A verse and a lie.

There is an other, there, in the mirror. Memory space. A body without a head.
There is movement. Abstract thought.
A girl moves her lips. Air brushes against your own, but it is foreign. The staccato of her breath moulds waves of language. Indivisible meaning that slips your grasp.
Traffic stills. Fumes rise from cracked pavement. A child sleeps under a rusting skyline. A mother overdoses.
It is Autumn. Cold snatches another eight, or eighty. Cells rearrange, and a man finds himself changed. He holds a knife to your throat. You laugh until he cries.
The train comes late. You walk around the block to **** time. You find you no longer recognise the buildings surrounding you.
There is misery in your reflection, but it is just the other looking back and smiling.

Don’t ask me to wish you luck with all your money
You spent your time pretending but who’s kidding who
Now you walk away into the sunset that you finally noticed
Justified by the praise of people who want to be just like you

What echoes in my mind is rejection of the message
There are shadows upon my future as if it even exists
The weather is not a summer breeze but a still day
There is no reassurance for a man who resists

But what did they learn from your gift of callous focus?
Ruining people’s lives was just something you had to do
It didn’t matter because the enterprise was your mistress
You tried to hide it but she was all that was inside you

I thought it was creating a need where there was none
Or impressing someone who wished they had an office
But the ink that couldn’t be recycled recorded a past I hate
I wonder if the man who threw it away has clinched fists

Who would relish in destroying a working man’s pride
Where are you when he has to tell his family he’s lost
How hard can life be when they laugh at all your jokes
Except the ones who know your warmth will turn to frost

A vacation without rain isn’t too much to ask is it?
But how do rapids form waiting for someone like me
I’m willing to stand under the falling tears of heaven
I won’t ask nature to be something it wasn’t  meant to be

You have to learn to say thank you but not really mean it
Every pleasantry has a price like every dollar paid is a loss
His wife waits for him to come home knowing his mind won’t
But the old wine is the dividend from him being the boss

I wanted to be everything you have ever dreamed about
But you didn’t know you had to live with another man’s ambition
I wonder if we could move to a small town and leave it all behind
I just want you to believe in me and not someone else’s vision

I will trust you.
I will believe in you
That you have my heart
And my best interests
Firmly in mind
That you will look out
For me and defend me
And will not be tempted
By the many distractions
That life can offer.
That you will not succumb
To the call of power
That my trust gives
And you will not mislead
Or lie, or betray me
Instead will work with me
To improve what we have
And work toward the future
Without measure or deceit
With complete integrity.
That you won’t mess with me
And tell me one thing
Then do a complete other.
That our relationship together
Will be as valuable to you
As it is to me, today
And everyday.
I don’t want to have to
Ask you for all of this.
It’s like a loving kiss.
It doesn’t work if
I have to ask for it.
But it hurts if you ignore it.

And in this way, love
Is so very much like
How we see the people
We elect to serve us.
If we are this blind
They deserve us.
And we deserve them
If we elect them
On some romantic whim
That everything will be
Just fine if it is a mystery.

Swallow your glass whole
Nothing will
Burning through your open closed
Swing, miss, swing

There’s an empty grave beneath the park
Where smiling children sing hymns to a silent dark

Who was suffocating
Once here, or nowhere?
Yellow toothed maniac
Down, dead, dying

I’ve worn my neck right through
Thinking of you