face plasters the wall a long boring walk i’ve seen three figures turned into the pavement perforated in memory dismal dysfunctional riding the hour hand crumbles into rust waving without a head layer cake wonder if she ever finished that english degree filling wonder if she went back to darwin filling catching a bus filling sitting with her legs crossed out filling eyes glossed into the crossing filling lines running into her pigments filling think i saw four strangers living together inside the head of my dead father didn’t attend his own funeral didn’t catch his own mouth didn’t measure the etch so his ashes formed back into themselves lost in the sleeves of a book tying a knot through his guts wading through waves of deprecated language without an end in sight

City came underwater
Circling itself
Fumbling through wet cloth
Rain soaked, rain soaked

Flooded all the mean streets
Dead ends
Singing like the cold stream
Running through our summer sweat

That moment ten years ago
Swore we’d die, but not like this
Broken like the old oak
Salt on your lips

Language
is one of my favorite things
for which I displayed
an early facility
I toyed with foreign languages
but went no further
it wasn’t where I wanted
to spend my time

I wanted to save the whales
improve education
fight poverty
protect our environment
a whole host of causes
I visited in a repeating cycle
whirling faster and faster until

I created my own vortex
and then found myself
at the far end of a wormhole
with no idea how I got there
much less how to return
and found myself observing
every time I behaved badly
in excruciating detail

A tactless comment
a thoughtless act
each small transgression
building stone by stone
until I created a fortress
walling myself within
this invisible shield

When we touch
is it you or me
who feels remotely?

All dissolves into Oneness.

17 July 2005

we may loose
each other
as suddenly as
we met
years ago
under a bluer sky

many steps
have already
been taken

rituals of complaint
that point
to deeper troubles

no talk
about certain things

a joking camouflage
for unspoken
sadness

gestures of weariness
of irritation
and withdrawal

embarrassed silence
across the double bed

seven billion people
in their separate worlds

the next step
may be

so easy

* *

I taught you
how to say my name correctly
Uhn-juh-nuh
and you taught me
how to say the name of your hometown
Can-an-day-gua.
A fair exchange,
perhaps.

Canandaigua.
Town that manufactured
Arbor Mist,
the cheap artificial wine I bought
[being the only one of drinking age]
that we drank
all summer,

well,

until July
when everything fell apart.

In August
When things settled down
when you decided that
you didn’t love me anymore,
we issued that age old
empty promise exes make:
“We’ll still be friends.”
Exchanged a few Facebook messages
and that was that.

I was never in love with you,
but
you still made it into my zine,
and I still think of you
from time to time,
visit your Facebook page
as if...

well, who knows?
It’s always the same with
everyone I used to know,
but Over is Over,
no social media changes that.

When I see that name:
Canandaigua,
I think of you,
but it’s just another name
and you’re just another Over.

It’s too bad, I suppose.
Was I supposed to say more?
Yes, of course I was,
what a question to ask
when I know that in the end
I’m always an overwhelming

Under-reaction.

[There’s a reason I never got bullied in school.]

I wonder why
I keep the letters,
the old poetry
when none of it makes me feel
anything at all
but
I guess all documentation is
in memoriam.

-
It’s too bad,
we couldn’t be
Civil.

[But of course,
Civil is never what you wanted,
I should have known better, my fellow borderline.
It’s all or none.
It’s always been that way.]

I think about you from time to time
not with anger,
just with,
well, I don’t know.

I don’t suppose
we’ll ever talk again.

The difference between you and I
is that if you cut me off,
I get the picture.
You say you’re done,
well,
say no more,
I’m gone.
There’s no need
to embarrass myself
again.

The difference between
you and I
is that I don’t cross
Boundaries.

-
Tonight
I find myself
rereading your poetry.
I do it from time to time -
strange to think of it
as illicit, Bad, Facebook stalking,
when we used to know each other.
[Seemingly.]

This one,
one of your many published poems,
is supposed to be about
Me.
That’s what you told her, anyway.
She didn’t get it,
and neither did I.
Even now,
there are not enough references to hold on to,
and the meaning is still lost on me.

[I was lost to you, a long time ago,
but that’s how it goes I guess.]

-
Found your soundclound page
[the only place I’ll hear your voice again]
and it’s strange
to see a picture of you
Smiling.

Your last words still buzz around in my head:

…I am so done trying to be your friend
…selfish,
…I deserve better

I don’t think
of you as smiling.

-
It’s too bad,
I suppose,
that I keep thinking
we could have been something,
that I keep thinking
it could have worked,
that I keep thinking
it could still work,
simply because
we had things in common.

Of course those things were never enough,
but what can I say?
I’m an idealist to the end.

-
It’s too bad, but
I am never going to forgive you.

i am lost in the wisp of your faltering
the fluttering of concrete entrenched
into stoic rigmarole

to reach out layer by layer
peeling unearthing
a catatonic subdivision of disjoint subdivisions
a limit ordinal
between touch and feeling

where we kiss on the cusp of that silent ocean on the edge of sound
drowned in the nebulous familiarity of
a distant melody
a tired resolve
re  solve the old puzzle  muscle memory's misted amnesia
half the pieces falling out the warn tinderbox

inarticulate drowned severed isomorphisms over
brea(d)thless infinities
self adjoint matted topologies
nestled snugly in the amniotic absolution
of form before being

      hands of matted ice
contorted into perfection
by the sculpting propensities
  of undulations of estrangement,

where we touch in the cusp of self reflections thousand mirrors inverted propensities
                        infinite infinitesimals
  nestled meromorphic partitions
hidden corners in the brevity of dusk
multiplicities fragmenting behind empty veils
(  to be seen is to be made discrete
   to be discrete is to flicker
                                     and disappear
  (inevitably invariable
          inevitable invariability))

we
       stand in a waterfall of gravel
   and drown our voices in the choke of our cellophane hearts

caked
             into fillets of aphasic tundra


  where we whisper our nothings in the desert on the boundary of silence

our words
                         escape us
           like rats from shipwreck


                                      we are
                       disembowelled catharsis
                           intentional and fatuous
                                   retching upon itself

       severed
and free
       and dead

I see you sit expectantly biting lips
  on the extended museum steps leading
to a veranda around the building, that invites
a flash mob,of your ilk, effervescent, to come together
perform and celebrate, nothing in particular,
  except giving a shock pleasure to all those marked  "the other"

Once you made me believe, together we make a whole,
that is the story we live on I was told, I merely listened,
I and you missed few beats and steps here and there
find us now in pages different, why, even ages apart,

"What a fine specimen,!" a pacifist, I can't but appreciate
watching your elan. As if seeing an alien in my home ground,
I watch the spectacle, gulping down my discomfiture dutifully,
while you romance with much finesse,to the cell phone,
you cling on as if it's the beau you want to show off.

"Wouldn't she make a fine museum piece?"
that would point towards the life style,
that highlights only the moment present,
and constantly on the run to remain there,
while past vanishes and future becomes obscure more and more.

With a gentle smile for you to pick up, when you are at peace,
I move on; more than the museum pieces still living,
I am interested in  regular exhibits I easily grasp.

Through filmy window,
I saw her leave the last time,
  .  .  .  My hand on the pane.