I wander thro’ each charter’d street.
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
A mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man.
In every Infants cry of fear.
In every voice; in every ban.
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackening Church appalls.
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

one of Lorca's best lines
is,
"agony, always
agony ..."
think of this when you
**** a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave
or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

it takes some people

forty years

two kids

a mortgage

and a divorce

to learn that, sometimes, love doesn't mean a **** thing.

lucky me.

it only took me one you.

what i said:
"you sound rough this morning."


what i meant:
"your voice is lavender and honey and tea time and supernovas colliding with gentle breezes and if i could wake up to it, just once, cocooned in a tangle of your arms and couch cushions and that blanket you keep in the back of your car, i swear by the stars in my eyes no one on this godforsaken planet would be out of earshot of my singing

i hope that tonight when i dream of you--it is no longer a matter of uncertainty, but anticipation--you speak like you've just overslept your alarm and frantically motored yourself to where i am, like is the case today.

i wish you had chosen me but if i could only listen to you speak to me, about anything--rivers or math homework or football or belonging or music or even your girlfriend--i promise i would listen with the beating urgency of a swimmer in a frozen stream, i would savor each word from your lips, like they were the spring and i was the underground daisy waiting for your kiss.

and in precisely three days i will have an essay to compose about a beautiful topic that would consume me thoroughly were it not for the memory of your groggy morning voice, so full of raspy complacency i can't breathe but instead of fulfilling my obligations i will be hashing out halfway comprehensible poetry about you and crying about how i cannot recreate the sound of your voice with any combination of hollowly clicking keys.

you are so beautiful that i could spend the remainder of my life with a five-subject notebook, scrawling 'your eyes. your smile. your hands. your voice' over and over endlessly and die feeling as though i had lived a thousand years of quiet adventure.

you are so much and too much for me and i have no idea why you see as much in me as you do but i will not question it, for fear that if i were to come too close to you, to run my fingers along the marvel of your face you would shrivel and unfurl into nonexistence, like the leaf in the fire."


and also:
"why can't your voice always sound like this?"

and finally:
"******* you're attractive"