True friends trust and love indeed
while lovers think too much and bleed
Their love ends in a graceless Hell
spoiled by thinking none too well

rarely ever straying, mired in those mourning hours
trying to recover tired shadows of how it once began
counting all of those buried nights in a flat red voice

our distances are littered with blood and bone, dear
still you, by pieces and joints, strive to mend this battered love
listen, old friend, to the graying silt of bloodless waters

heart, lips, hands all once breathed, emerging slowly
no wiser now, you blindly dredge the impermeable darkness
for promptly repeated pasts, not unspoiled beginnings

not wholly betaken
as a person, disgusted
forever expecting
and drinking the poison

not wholly betaken
a dead-perfect graveyard
of memory, of sun
and of promises soiled

nothing was waiting
no, nothing was worth it
nothing, no
nothing
—no other things

yet no other person
could ever have been
so wholly betaken
or so it seems

no, no, no—no!
not so wholly betaken, no
never, not ever
so wholly betaken
     so wholly betaken
     so wholly betaken
never, not ever
     so wholly betaken as I

We trace the burden of the heart, you and I
And suffer the cold darkness together
A weary gray moon labors across the night
As we worship the seasons of our love

Time must hold its cold pen apart from regret
For a dream to write a better image
Take this sweet change and show the stars
Let your gentle dust touch my sleep

You carry a hungry heart
outside without help
Divine, burning windows
behind locks, beside sad smiles
that devour the fine light air:
They’re perfect warmth

Oh, rise breeze, cry forever
Whisper soft, hopeful comfort
Open that same courageous list
of autumn-worn memories
Mine flex—break!—under lost words
into bitterly different sounds

Soar inside the space there
Pass the sleepy crimson trees
insatiable delight, flying wonders
beautiful labors, racing the midnight
yet shaping only sore dawns because
I overlooked my lasting desire

Draw new recovery with me
in other ripe and formal strokes
Golden water tumbling down
lifting bubbles, trying to comment
whenever that same message listens
and always winks this time of year

Yesterday’s door, so up-to-date
Why chance a giggle, merely
to forget, a chance to lean on that glass
and borrow those three paper lines—
straight from where we’d dropped off—
as if their call might later amaze us