I
The longer I stare at your picture on the screen
The closer I imagine us to be.
Pixels arranged in your shape
Form a convincing illusion:
Ersatz love.

II
That little (1), that yearned for harbinger -
Words of love, of friendship
Are imminent, a mere click away.
Breathless, I make the leap
And learn all about the exciting new program of the Minnesota Orchestra.

III
I pressed my lips against my message to you.
The screen was warm against my lips.
I inhaled the fragrance of your reply.
It smelt of warm plastic.

IV
I waited all day by the radio for my request:
The one portion of influence I could exert
Over fluid swirling chaos.
They never played it.

V
You didn't reply to my final text of the conversation,
As if you'd walked away and left me talking to myself.
It was then that the pettiness of my complaints
Truly struck me.

timothy lynch
the Catholic boy
won’t talk until Easter

he doesn’t speak in his classes
to his parents
or his friends
he doesn’t laugh or giggle
just keeps to himself
until lent passes by

i want to tell him it’s a waste
of three months

//
he’s ******* mary jacobson
the Baptist pastor’s daughter
every day after school
anyways

she’s glad
that he’s given up talking
she says he needs
to be Holier and cleanse

but she mostly
just likes when he’s quiet
during ***

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

I watch a sunrise behind an old abandoned church in my home-town
I haven't slept for two nights
the crystal clear beauty of the sleep-deprived
the jaw aching beauty of the pink sky
almost hurts my eyes
the irony I see reflected back at me
how such a daring light could hide behind
a cowardly institution
My thoughts are crisp and clear
after two nights of no sleep
and I cant describe
I cannot describe what I see
But its there behind my eyelids
when I close them shut
I am dreaming of tomorrow
But tomorrow never comes.
I am closer to god when I am sleepless
Though I'm not sure I believe in god when I am awake
like all things are during suffering
and the sky is just a canvas
for me to whisper my thoughts to
I paint his hands in the shape of clouds
under this red sky at morning
They hold nothing
and nothing holds them
heavy hands and my heavy eyelids
both closed
open
wide
shut
he holds me in his hands
he holds the promise of tomorrow
I tell him tomorrow is a lie.

"Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."

I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out
I ended up ******* in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.'

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!'
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn
        Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's
        bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father
        hath no lion
You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for
        your Bridegroom.'

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink
        in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside
        thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in
        deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
        greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten
        face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had
        nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by
        Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible
        Presence!'I cried'Eat me or die!'

It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
        steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
        Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
        but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your
        Mercy.

                                        Paris, March 1958

In college we are taught to be animals
like "monkey see, monkey do".
Paying in pennies
to live in this petting zoo
Uncaged
Untamed
Some of us broken
Most of us maimed.
Escaping,
freedom without a clue.

There is no catharsis to ease
the knowledge that someone
has been purged from the Earth.
There is no consolation,
no prayer to speak or be heard,
and words only to express
the hopelessness of such a want,
but no words for the want itself.

There are questions to be asked,
but I cannot seem to form them.