Dear Boy In the Mirror Who Will Die on the Barricade

In this light, your hair is more blond than pink.
A starched collar, a fierce and joyous smile,
you are committed to Patria and nothing else.

Nothing has made me understand love
and confused my sense of self
more than slipping into your fictional skin

I would lower my register
I am down the octave

I would lie with your flat bare chest
against the curve of his shoulder,
kiss the knob of his spine
in philia.

Let his wine-dark breath brush the back of your ears,
his burning hands to our future plans, saying,
“Let me sleep here until I die.”
“You are incapable-”
“You'll see.”

We are Romantics at heart.

You see, I know love.
It exists above the waist,
at the knot in your schoolboy's tie:
in the space between your first and middle fingers
where lips brush a knuckle and no further.

Two years and 45 days.

I am not sad today.

I am sad most days when I think of you.
The wound has lessened,
some days it is only the stretch of a stiff muscle
other days the frenetic darkness of a childhood's midnight closet
But not today.

Today is nearly spring and a crocus peeks out beneath
half-melted snow on my neighbors lawn
and the tentative leaf buds of the oak tree wave in the wind.

This day when I feel you most near,
lemon squares covered in sugar and tall stems of white wine.
A birthday party tonight.

The world is filled with you today
like a secret season,
gulls on my rooftop
begging for cake.

A Homing Beacon

Today is the day we wade in frozen rivers,
through heartbreak, sleep
and wake in the night
victorious
With no one to clean the armour
we took to battle then.

When I miss you, it is midnight sweats,
and pre-dawn starts
eyeing winter moutnains from spring towers,
an easy isolation.

It is distraction in sorting out bills,
budgeting tears and counting the calories lost in them.

When I miss you, it is ponderous,
the creeping slow lane
passing the glitter-paved freeway I am demanding from the world.

You are the exit I want to get off at.
I need directions to our house,
 but north was never steady for me
I never understood the draw, so instead of freedom-bound
I am mired in jungles of small eyes
and quick whispers,
of sympathy and in the care of gin.

when the cellular tower calls me home

You are late autumn
cold evening rain running
home down the cracked eastern sidewalk

A pocket vibration and
the shivering answer I Will Be
soaked to the bone and my cigarette
will go out three times

Little puddle splash and the western front
is on fire

These days you are transcontinental
instead of transatlantic and I have
trouble deciphering your drunk Moroccan hand
where coffee spilled

but like you, the paper still smells of the sea.

Love in the Ashes

Listen.

There was love in this house, and I have photographic evidence to prove it.

There are pictures of us kissing,
sometimes my face is screwed up
sometimes you are pretending I am someone else
or I am pretending you are not you

And sometimes we are satisfied:
emotion breaks in the slant of my eyelash
and the placement of your hands on my clavicle

We lean in.

The lipstick already smudging on the corner of your mouth
the future ashes of our burning bridges smeared glitter under my whiskey eyes
caked to the waterline

We love harder.

I have the evidence in the flash on a bar window in Brooklyn.

We love

harder.

Subject to Change

I've been drinking since the piano started, Tom.

I'm the same kind of bad as you,

and I'm only going to the top of the hill

where the sun shines a mouth of freedom

and the cloud cover puts flowers on the flower's grave

and the rags I'm hoisting put cigars between my teeth

I grow a Wolverine

or maybe a Van Buren

but my chest concaves

and I'll take the sins of my father

if you'll take the sins of my mother

make a bone song out of this bluesy invitation,

and get me real gone.

123012-123112, "For Elliott, Part Deux ohne Trunkenheit"

Creatures like us
think too much about what it means
to be one of us.

We don't know
and our identification must always be for somewhere better
someone - ourselves of a different caliber.

I wish we could trade bodies for a day,
I would give you my breasts in an instant,
an easy femininity and heels that rarely hurt -
natural sway and carriage to be noticed.

The stares only feel terrible when you remind yourself
of what they could mean in strange crowded bars
or Post Alley after two.

In you,
I would hold tiny espresso cups,
drumming fingertips at young ladies reading Proust,
ask them what they know Anais and Henry.

I would buy a leather jack
and climb long limbed over abandoned warehouses
putting bricks in zipper pockets
I would call the fog on the pier back home
find a pretty girl
and kiss her as best my newer mouth
knew how.