She was a thrifted sweater and denim and jersey knit sheets
Pizza breath and red wine and toothpaste
Alabaster skin and knotted hair and freckled shoulders
A tangible dream and my favorite good morning
She agreed to let me kiss her and I agreed to let her slip my shirt over my head before she became
Blood and tears
"I trusted you" and "I’m sorry"
Midnight poems and a drunk "I need you"
I’m afraid I loved you like the way I wrote

Well…
Life is or was a box of chocolates
Right?
And me and you
We took it on
It was perfect
I hated milk chocolate
And you loved it
And you hated those coconut ones
But I really liked them
And it all worked so well
Not a chocolate left uneaten or unsavored
Until one day we found a coconut filled milk chocolate

I am syllables,
Proper numbers in wonder,
Am I haiku now?

I'm not sure how to act
I can't hear music anymore
I can't see the bright side of things
and I can't feel anyone’s touch

All I hear
is the shallow lonely beating of my heart
along with my spiraling thoughts
that never seem to shut up

All I see
is myself, being trapped alone in the corner
in my own reflection
while my eyes stare endlessly at me

All I feel
is this consuming depression inside of me
taking over my mind and my tattered and frayed heart
and some very rare, occasional giggles...which fade...

All of my senses, fade inside of me
echoing repeatedly, reminding me
all i have to love and fear
is myself.

I want to feel you like I used to
I want to hear the music that set me free
I want to see your reassuring smile
and know that everything will be alright

My mind:
Filled with memories
Of unkind
And remedies
For pain

My brain:
Is going insane
By the very thought
Of any distraught
Coming to you

It's a war in here,
I need you dear

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

I tied together
a few slender reeds, cut
notches to breathe across and made
such music you stood
shock still and then

followed as I wandered growing
moment by moment
slant-eyes and shaggy, my feet
slamming over the rocks, growing
hard as horn, and there

you were behind me, drowning
in the music, letting
the silver clasps out of your hair,
hurrying, taking off
your clothes.

I can't remember
where this happened but I think
it was late summer when everything
is full of fire and rounding to fruition
and whatever doesn't,
or resists,
must lie like a field of dark water under
the pulling moon,
tossing and tossing.

In the brutal elegance of cities
I have walked down
the halls of hotels

and heard this music behind
shut doors.

Do you think the heart
is accountable? Do you think the body
any more than a branch
of the honey locust tree,

hunting water,
hunching toward the sun,
shivering, when it feels
that good, into
white blossoms?

Or do you think there is a kind
of music, a certain strand
that lights up the otherwise
blunt wilderness of the body -
a furious
and unaccountable selectivity?

Ah well, anyway, whether or not
it was late summer, or even
in our part of the world, it is all
only a dream, I did not
turn into the lithe goat god. Nor did you come running
like that.

Did you?

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

souls encrypted in
nighttime sun now revealing
black pages that burned