You recognize love after the fact
You did what you did and that was that

Don't say words that you don't mean
When I'm gone, please speak well of me

Looking back now
I only wish I had been kinder
Did I ever know love, did I ever know love?
And could I have been blinder?

Don't hold back all your love for someday, for someday

I would say that I'm sorry if it would do any good
But to never regret means you have to forget
and I don't think that I could

YOU HAVE
TO WANT IT



MAN
“go outside,” the doctor says,
“stand on the grass for fifteen minutes a day.”
you’re here because today you want to get better.
“tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m scared.”

“I mean physically.”
“so do I.”




ANGEL
an angel can come in a burst of a blister,
on the tip of a finger.
he always starts small
with the whispers,
         “i know about love,”
   like you asked for it.

he prefers to come at the end of the month,
            amid deadlines, another set of blood-soaked, ruined *******,
some traces
     of the relationship with your father and failure.
but you like that: having an excuse that sends you
   scrambling for car keys.

    at first it’s forests, their fires,
the flowers that follow once the ash and skin and soil
are mixed. at first it’s earth and rubbing it in,
     seeing god behind your eyelids.

so you clean the pipes, keep washing sheets.
      the voices they stop coming; once in a while you
      read online how many kids this week have overdosed
    on ****** and it’s foreign. kids with dirt
under their fingernails, kids in basements, kids
with ***** canvas shoes and overgrown cuticles.
           they don’t look like you. you still look like
you.




MAN
                   mike sparks a j in the basement.
        we chew on xanax and no one’s paying attention to the TV.
some white static and early afternoon rain. it’s made me gone
ghost, sitting on a leather recliner, silent with a cigarette.
              it’s a right of initation to carve your name in mike’s
coffee table and sign on the back wall. this summer I added
   mine alongside the kids I used to get nervous around in high school.
                       his mom comes downstairs with a joint of her own rolled
and a French manicure. her lip liner is too dark for her
lipstick, and phil’s warmly lit and ivan leans so far into the
couch he isn’t human.

mike sits up, “ma,
you know you owe me some money?” he changes the channel.
she laughs throaty, her insides a swamp. she’s
prettier when she’s high like this.
                       “I got your money,” she promises. it gets soft
from there and phil smiles over his body and ivan moves
further into the couch. she touches mike’s hair.

“good kid,” she tells me and I smile up at her. I wish I had
a body but I left it wandering through
the thunderstorm outside. ivan nods his hazy head.
          mike hands her a diet coke and she hands him a fifty and she goes—through the walls—
       phil digs his hand into the couch cushions to find papers. I go
ghost in the seconds it takes him to spark his lighter.

the ghost lights herself a cigarette.
   the ghost lights herself another cigarette.
               the ghost lights herself a cigarette. “are you chain
smoking now,” phil slurs playfully. “yes,” the ghost agrees.
     “are you having fun,” ivan turns to her.
                “yes.”

HUMAN
i don't want to know what love is like i want
                                       air that
                     tastes like apples and
       i want real raw
         brown sugar
       i want to shoot up every
grey second for two weeks— get frantic then
       take benzodiazepine until i shred my
stomach lining, singing
                                                    
            i want bud light and
a backyard. bed time stories and
            white furniture and ritz crackers
             with fancy party cheeses
                              i want to complain about the drinking age,
                              new york’s black-dusty wind charm. complain like the
                              moon is still lonely and not a destination
                                          i want to wake up in the sun spot
                                          i want to wake up to a baby crying
                          soft like mothers do, going to
                                     that dear one to quiet them down,
                                        i can be here to kiss you calm
                                                              i want to get out of bed
                                                              i want to call friends back
so winter can come and i can still
                              go home.



       WANT
         throwing on the rag&bon;; jeans,
         neither rag nor bone more milky skeleton-ized, eyes
         pin headed. faces struck yellow all tops of the heads
         with umbrellas and sorry throats. "here take mine" no
         "you'll get sick" it's fine
                                                        the gothic church with social strangers
                                                       ­ tweakers and nodders all smiley side-
                                                        eye­-Y
                        i know the gimme gimme
                        i know the routine
         and blondie (they think) here she comin she twenty years clean
         blondies a baby she weak as **** she dont know what she got
but i know the "i want" "i want"
         and the ok baby,
         Got U




HUMAN
i dont want to know what love is like,
                  i want to walk the manhattan bridge at sunrise
                  i want
                       grass wisps and capers
                       chicken noodle soup
                       a night at the new york city ballet
                       and pauses in sentences, in breath
                       the breath before a kiss or the breath
                       after it. i want instant hot chocolate
                       and reality television, ugg slippers with
                       faux trim. a bicycle painted lilac with a
                       basket, and clear skin. i want pier 63 on
                       a 70 degree day, the weepies playing
i want to be a ghost
            where ghosts are white sheets with two button eyes
             and make jokes about halloween and their past lives
i want to go there
to street fairs
and watch fireworks and write out names
in fresh concrete patches
                                                     i want to eat blackberries in the bathtub
                                                     i want skin to make me feel safe again
                                   i want to want to live
                                   but i know the "i want" "i want" and the ok baby,
Got U




WANT

they were right,
                               they were all
              going (right
they were righjt
they were right

air hanging eyes to dry
blood pull in push out brown golden push IN
  

they were right they were all right
nothing could ever make me as happy again



WANT

it’s a hold on something so quiet and soft in your hands and no one knows what it is and you dont know what it is. it’s the pin drop in a hospital room and so lemonade refreshing. im in a snowstorm and i cant see the city, cant see past my own two feet. im on a long highway drive and it’s rain that comes in sheets so hard i cant move. i walk and the world writhes underneath me and we put needles in our arms. and we wait for the blood push. and i watch my life go away in warm *******. and i watch it go this way like it’s not me. and i’m going home to ****** and i’m scared, i say outloud to maggie, “i’m scared i’m going to do something stupid,” and she is so quick to say “like what” that i know she knows what it is. and i’m so scared.





WANT

give up on me , I Know where im going. don’t follow. don’t even look for me. keep
Counting sugar cubes and stirring your coffee , it is my wish for you that it always tastes sweet.
I love you












WANT


i just wanted to be kept warm by something that looked like love



MAN
i walk slower on the streets of manhattan; stop at
   the strand, look for the man with eyebrow rings
asking "do you know where a girl in this city could get some relief?"
         he laughs, says he just looks like someone who would know
            that. he asks, "is that Monster Blood?”
                             &nbsp

don't speak, even if spoken to
2. don't listen or attempt to empathize
3. don't comb your hair
4. don't shave
5. don't give your time to past lovers
6. turn off your computer and phone
7. tell your mother you aren't coming home
8. blow up your bridges
9. forget your name and friends as they were as synthetic as television sets.
10. and never ever smile

the weepies and worrieds will tell you there is a bible.
there is comfort in god.
and all you think is,
yeah, i already tried that scene.

the relatives and the rationals will tell you life is only as good as you make it.
perhaps when you fake it.

the lustful and the clinging ex-lovers will tell you they have seen beauty in you,
remind them of damage done.

go on solo strolls.
read poetry that
deals solely with
fire and brimstone.
and never ever smile.

and you will be just as satisfied with your plight,
as this vapor,
who already took his flight.

decompressing on a mattress
a white one without sheets
wearing bug *******
and  the loose yellow sweater
with the worn out elbows
and too long sleeves

I saw you walking
you looked so small
like a rosebud
it was raining and i was so in love
the outside of the windows looks like a forest
despite my suburban life.
i loved you so much

i can’t listen to the Strokes without thinking of my first love,
and how I only fell in love with them because
they were his favourite band, and i was in love with him.
i can’t listen to Mozart, Chopin, Satie, or classical music of any kind without thinking of my mother playing piano late at night
while I fell asleep to the sound of her fingers emanating warm melodies.
i can’t listen to Elliott Smith without thinking of being on the bus on the way to high school, and how much solace his music brought me
during those deeply lonely years of anguish and abandonment.
i can’t listen to the Beatles without thinking of my entire family,
jamming together in the garage, without thinking of love.
i can’t listen to the Weepies without thinking of my best friend,
driving around in her car on our way to anywhere, how those songs are symbols of our friendship in the form of sound.
i can’t listen to Regina Spektor without thinking of myself, throughout all stages of my life, without feeling alive, reminding me of who i am,
as an artist, as a lover, as a being.
i can’t listen to Tegan and Sara, *****, Rilo Kiley, Metric, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or Broken Social Scene without thinking of my high school friends, all those concerts we went to, all the late nights.
That was the music that made me brave.
I can’t listen to Jazz music without thinking of my grandfather, and how many times I sang with him while he played the piano and smiled.

most of these people have come and gone
and i could go on
but if I’ve loved someone, there is a song that I will always associate
with them, and that time of my life.
music is the definition of every moment.
it’s one of the most comforting truths that there is.