most of all, i want to listen to your voice. anything you have to say. recite your grocery list, what you ate for breakfast. what’s your opinion on the weather? remind me about how you like the snow, but hate the cold. how you couldn’t fall asleep because the wind kept whistling through your broken window. tell me the story about how you broke that window again. again. again. how you hit that baseball too hard and it went soaring. tell me about that moment. the moment that it looked like that ball was flying. how’d you feel when it crashed? no, don’t tell me about that, i know it’ll make you think of the crash. how i crashed down on the concrete when we were walking that one night. i was barely conscious, so tell me about how you carried me a mile to my apartment. if you have to, tell me about why you left me there alone. how you’d asked me on the walk because we “needed to talk” and you had to do it that night, because she’d given you an ultimatum. don’t tell me about how you’d stayed with me that last month out of pity. or if you do, let those be the softest words you speak. softer than the things you whispered to me months ago. softer than the way you touched my cheek before you left me on that bed. tell me again how touching me made you sick those last few weeks and please assume that i felt the same. because every time i think of the truth, every time i think of how it wasn’t over for me, isn’t over for me...i love you. i can’t breathe. don’t let me speak. don’t let me speak. i only want to listen to the sound of your voice. keep talking. say anything. tell me all about her.

In a happy reign there should be no hermits;
The wise and able should consult together....
So you, a man of the eastern mountains,
Gave up your life of picking herbs
And came all the way to the Gate of Gold --
But you found your devotion unavailing.
...To spend the Day of No Fire on one of the southern rivers,
You have mended your spring clothes here in these northern cities.
I pour you the farewell wine as you set out from the capital --
Soon I shall be left behind here by my bosomfriend.
In your sail-boat of sweet cinnamon-wood
You will float again toward your own thatch door,
Led along by distant trees
To a sunset shining on a far-away town.
...What though your purpose happened to fail,
Doubt not that some of us can hear high music.

She said,

"I am happy with the occasional dash of rage,
anxiety, or depression.
In the end,
it makes for a beautiful portrait,
and you've been here
to witness the brushes of my past six months
painting something incredible, "

and I was in love.

My body once was black
with ash and sadness

And I plead
I beg
and now I confine you
To a tattoo.

Shedding slowly off my sin.

I just feel
there
Not like I exist
But like I'm just...
there.

'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom. It's the awful raincoat
making me look like a selfdefeated self-murdering imaginary gangster, an idiot in a rueful coat, how can they understand my damp packs - my mud packs -
„Look John, a hitchhiker'
„He looks like he's got a gun underneath that I. R. A. coat'
'Look Fred, that man by the road' „Some sexfiend got in print in 1938 in *** Magazine' –
„You found his blue corpse in a greenshade edition, with axe blots'

Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
Old Rough Roads
One High Iron
Mainway

Denver is the same
'The guy I was with his uncle was
the govornor of Wyoming'
'Course he paid me back'
Ten Days
Two Weeks
Stock and Joint

'Was an old crook anyway'

The same voice on the same ship
The Supreme Vehicle
S.S. Excalibur
Maynard
Mainline
Mountain
Merudvhaga
Mersion of Missy

The northern woods are delicately sweet,
   The lake is folded softly by the shore,
   But I am restless for the subway’s roar,
The thunder and the hurrying of feet.
I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat
   Against the image of the tower that bore
   Me high aloft, as if thru heaven’s door
I watched the world from God’s unshaken seat.
I would go back and breathe with quickened sense
   The tunnel’s strong hot breath of powdered steel;
But at the ferries I should leave the tense
      Dark air behind, and I should mount and be
   One among many who are thrilled to feel
      The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.