It's been four months since you made that decision.
Four Months.
How?
How has it only been four?!
I feel like it's been a lifetime,
since we've heard that laugh of yours,
or since you've picked on me and made me feel like I belonged.
Time seems to be almost at a standstill,
as we still try to figure out why you did what you did.
Four months ago,
you decided to leave.
Four months ago,
our lives changed forever.
I just wish we would've known before.
Maybe we could've saved you.
But here we are...
Four months from June 1st...
still crying those same tears.
Still wishing you wouldn't have left us.

There's no Honeymoon
for a guy who lives in a hidden
mountain villa in Montenegro,
but still in all, Eli didn't want
to bring his new wife home just yet.
Ivan was hanging with the bands
fluid line-up as they came in & gave
them ideas for new projects;
the Unknowns had no set written music;
their lyrics improvised & memorized
& repeated endlessly into
reverberating batteries of over-amplified
microphones & studio tricks like buzz
saws & screaming babies ... ...
the sound of the Uks came out as a loud
blare that deafened one instantly & bringing
on the instant forgetting of the immediately
preceding moment; the mind going
numb as the sound took over
& the body convulsed drunkenly all over
the room ... Ivan was seeking
an overweight ******, but they all
seemed to have vanished
from the earth. The crabby old Babushka's
could still be had for a bottle of cheap
***** but for once Ivan had real
money to burn & as the band's
defacto lyricist, ***** came in a can
not only stamped 'Guaranteed' - [       ]|||-|||| |
they were stamped all kinds of ways |||| |
What puzzled Ivan most was why he
wasn't ******* someone right then,
but since he couldn't be certain he wasn't;
he looked beneath himself to be sure.|

the poet...drunk on absinthe stumbles
into Sonya on the street
w/ no name---
Ivan goes by wondering about her freckled
roller coaster
wrenched from its rusty rivets;
her serial-killer father
goes free,
pink & purpler rubber bracelets---
Sonya...staggering
by on ******; freckled legs
in torn red fishnets---
thrumming instruments from the cafes,
chaos within the rib-cage, let's go
to the wedding
of the fan dancer---
(                                                   )

Oh Ivan , I see you everywhere.
From here, there and anywhere.
A John, A Giovanni
I see you in words, in rhythms and the beam of sunlight
I see you in the sheer cold

With a name so usual, bears a smear of mystery
Saint,celebrity and nobody
You walk down the street wishing
you could be someone else
With this name you are everyone but stands from the crowd
Are you proud of being a Slavic variation or
You just want to be John anyhow?

Dear Ivan
Hear me say, except me, you belong to everybody else