compasses, clocks, knives, are useless now.
clues, few.
coffinlike rooms full of certain exclamations,
4am empty train stations full of dangling questions.
selected memory, particularly of being
cruel to love. character,
existence, poetry, it all becomes layered
like crime novels.
blurred and unblurred,
in stained-rag mind, faces and places and
the theme,
tense, it is an age
where nothing begins and i myself begin to
(be) mean
many other things
in addition to what i say.
"what is the meaning of this?"
"i don't know."
"what should we do?"
get jilted again, spiral drunk, die on the
floor, bored, playing
sick,
i don't know.
"been there,
done that,"
it's a slow slowing and a trying to forget,
hands dirtier, shards smaller.
i don't even know if
this was an accident?

through climaxes and comedowns,
still carrying clouds
around; to cash the check, to the party,
to the pharmacist,
to the burial ground,
craving a reason to go hungry.

god, how big are your hands
god, will tomorrow be better
god, what have i done, what can i do, how

the more i remember
the more i just remember the young day
i had screamed so hard for so long at the unanswering rain

881

I’ve none to tell me to but Thee
So when Thou failest, nobody.
It was a little tie—
It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—
Would’st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—
So—overtaking Thee—

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—”
I took one look at the impenetrable obscurities
That the distance concealed,
And another at the unanswering stones,
That consented mutely to mark the way, if not lead;
At the bending flowers whose faces I could not read;
And heard the equivocal vocalizations
Of ambiguously colored birds, and I—
I walked from the path to sit beneath a nearby tree,
And began to wait.

Are you all right?

you unanswering sat, beside the window facing west,
the crimson disappearing over that hill, you and my father walked, 50
years, oh so many years ago, rocking back and forth,
a wise thoughtful expression painted by years on an aged face,
wistfully awaiting the exact words the right tense, the perfect time,
to sway, rock back, then turn to me, as the sun disappeared, I  saw on that hill out the window my father waiting.
You smiled, looked at me, grabbed my hand, squeezed it , so tight.
Said yes,
I felt you go to be with Dad.

The black cat sat on the road of the sideways door and asked me to ask a question unanswered by the universe, for it seemed a little trepidation to ask such a stranger as me whose permanence like the door has gone beneath the waves of light and into darkness below the sun and stars, deeper than the night-cat’s fur. Yet I knew the answer and asked the question, and the stars gleamed brighter that rust, and the galaxies I saw were within the slitted eyes before my face, though I did not fall to my forgottenness in that galaxy, but lived in my ghostly form, unanswering questions of old and trying not to remember my thoughts. The cat was unknown to me after that, the tail like a feather duster leaping among the moons of my world, crowing down at me from branches and constellations. I wonder how the universe would think of such a black cat, one who does not mind the coldness of ghosts or stars, or the unknowingness of such things, and who asks for askers and questions them until the dust settles and transforms around it.

A chill wind shivers o'er Tempest Sea,
One final breath that lingers on;
A lost voice beckons to his Deity,
Why unto me thy will was done?

For I mingled grateful as the fountains
Borne through cracks from ocean waves,
And sought for Heaven amidst high mountains,
And spent my grief at familial graves,
And shared of myself, not a silent stone,
And kept thy faith in spite of all,
And for this and more, thou bade me alone,
Unanswering thy call?

Now, the fountains dried and the Earth may mourn
And the ocean flooded from salt-cracked skin,
And the flowers have choked to the strangling thorn,
And the ossuary opened, and beckoned me in,
And the sun has waned, and the clasp of night
Had me bound in a beam of the moon's device,
And these lips felt the kiss of the barrow wight
As thou denied me thrice.

A chill wind shivers o'er Tempest Sea,
One final breath that lingers on;
A lost voice beckons to his Deity,
Why unto me thy will was done?

Silence spirited with teal
and an hour when nothing need happen,
Time gone beyond unanswering light,
hurling unheard echoes, slipping away
on the wind.

Notice the decomposing day,
the baffled bee meandering
among the season’s blossoms.

Follow the moon’s blood-red beams
and the goddess gone to fire.
She’s left cryptic messages
on the clouds for those who
care to read.

It’s useless to expect a bath or
of rainbows, a rush of angel wings.
Instead, treasure each small drought
of tenderness, pronouns love’s name
softly, and be forgiveness of the butterfly.