The end of Memory
Hard and dull, matt surface
Plaster white and bitter
Tasting of no return, no reruns
Just a passing out of reach
Animate to inanimate
Clockwork spring extending

End of memory
Not forgetfulness of a Lotus eater's gape
Nor distance crowded out
With noise and meaning filling
All the gaps
The spaces left for colour and
The lines that merge in a single
Perspective point

Of memory
Gradual fading and graduation
Stutters of old strangeness
Pretences of identity
Nighttime of distant blues
Past sunsets
Or mountains drawn
Childish grey pyramids
Sinking in childish grey sands

Memory
Unspoken and
Matt and
Linear and
Lunar and
Lastly
And

A sledgehammer kills,

or it may loosen a thought,


something from the past.

For my English III class
             Mr. P
had sprawled                        out
S
       T
    A
                  C
       K
S
       of books       in t h e front      of his
                 classroom.
He had a short lecture and introduction to blackout poetry, then
everyone shot out of their chairs to find a page they wanted

I was the last to go up, the first book I found had a beautiful picture and I decided to use it

                             Months later
the assignment was completed and in the gradebook, he said if we wanted we could keep them

Now as I lay in my room at 2:34 AM on a
  Friday I sit and think about it.
   It wasn't long ago when I created it,
       but it also had been enough time for me to leave the public school entirely to could be                    
                          homeschooled
The­ only thing I regret was not saying goodbye to him
       in person


                    And getting that poem

remembering so vividly
the promises you spoke
the way they remained long after you left
the roses whiting away beside my bed
remembering is painful
but i can never forget
tried to smoke away, drink my regret
but you are at the bottom of the bottle
diagnosis
hypnosis
remembering too potent

~
You are
the river that runs
beneath this city.

You lend
the beautiful but empty
buildings a beating heart.

And the buildings were essential.

They were a part
of the lives unfolding
in their shadows.

Sometimes it
almost seems like
they are listening.

I'm sinking inside them.

Tell me a story
about an outgoing road,
the house where you grew up
near the Sea of Azov.

I think
I flew there once.

The birds
that perch inside my chest
sing loud, sing soft.

Maybe they
will sing again for us
tomorrow.
~

These sounds of silence
Rumble and roar
I’m in a constant state of questioning
Asking what love is,
Filling in the gaps between all my questions
With the things we saved for March
Relishing in the idea of spring
And what it means to bloom
Peeling away at citrus,
Reaching for the plums and nectarines
In the icebox, scarfing down cooled melon
Picking at peonies and daffodils
Thinking about tea but hating its taste
I was never a morning person
But the sun these days is so new

But it’s when the winter creeps back
And I awake to a morning frost
Bits of past, pieces of December
Pine trees and heating cars
I remember the worth of remembering
And the reality of how time moves
And how all these questions
Sprinkle down with snow, rain,
sun rays, or leaves
never leaving, never eased
only knowing that I don’t know
and that seasons don’t return; they just pass