S'en Aller

You creep up on me,
late August,
creep into the corners
of the rooms I walk in
in cities no belonging to me.
You show up in flashes:
a young man's sweater,
a girl's eyes
in wine so sweet it is almost unbearable.
You pop my peripheral,
and I'm dreaming of this
in the house of my lover,
in a house made of you.

Three years is a dream decieved;
you're horrid and I only miss you
when you appear suddenly and go just as soon.
I don't miss you at night anymore,
and I don't wake up startled
from a 'mareish kiss.
I don't dream of Iran,
or Muslim weddings.

But you creep up on me,
in late August,
every year,
with physical reminders as if God is saying,
'don't forget this.
don't forget him.'
as if I could when your memory
is still the ink of a thousand pens
and the paint on my brush in winter.

A thousand pieces are still missing
but my heart has stopped tearing
when you pop my peripheral
in blue.

4751

4.751 is a long number,
it is many days of laughter
and more days of tears.

It is an achievement,
sometimes celebrated by grandeur---but
you don't just run out and marry
your friends

It is a number stumbled on in childhood--
pre-adolescent, bag lunch
in the library or behind the school

It is a number clung to as umbrellas,
the storm of hormones and
girlfriends and
pomegranates
in regroup some years later.
It whispers, "everything will be all right."

In the night,
"everything will be all right."

I remember we said now,
we wished we could go
back and tell those girls
tell those girls
"you'll get laid"
"you'll be somebody, someday."

yeah, someday.

4,751 is a long number.
An unexpected frame of mind,
thirteen years a slice of time--
a big one.

It is an exhaustion number.
It's a bleeding number.
It's a shut-the-door-before-you-could-get-the-last-word number.
It's a selfish number, an adult number,
a no-holds-barred-fuck-you-I'm-tired number.

4.751 is four days past the storm and
five past the battle cry.

It was a silent war,
in respect to tongue-holding and
held back tears.

It's an Indian number in the land of cowboys bangbangbang.

Bang.

It's a hollow shout,
a burn out,
an end.

Domestic Violence

There's a good woman hiding somewhere
deep beneath this skin
Beneath the twilight and between the sharp edges,
beyond the little prickles and between the fight
there is a good woman here.

She stands with a backbone of fretboards and her hips
are made of f-holes.
Her hair of silver strings, softly swishing a lullaby,
coaxing a song from the still summer air.

There's a good woman in here,
she's the mother of your children,
the wife cooking dinner and fetching your slippers;
There's a good woman in here,
waiting for the crescendo of rifle fire and rock salt,
pacing the steps of the guillotine for freedom.

Eternal Resident

We avoid toll roads,
not just for blue collar pretension,
but for the extra time
between Newark and my house
10 minutes to 25 to I love you
and you are sober
but you kiss goodnight
with heat and hunger
with 5 years of pent up
you and I
never fulfilled
but for 10 minutes
the bathroom in neither of our houses---
as if we were 17.

but you're a homebody now,
and I will undomesticate you
in the sand of the Mediterranean
on the shores of the Nordsee,
I will breathe you life
where you have lost.
I will breathe air
where you have concrete lungs,
flow water where you have dammed,
sow seeds where you have tilled,
an empty field, sought for nothing--
I will flame--
far and away--
my signal fire infinite in a sea of vacuummous darkness
in a place where silence shatters souls and shoulders
in a home
we will build brick by brick

The Summerland Fairytale -- 060709, 10:35 p.m.

Liebe, tell me a story. I cannot sleep, though my body is wretched and little me can't wait to drift away.

Tell me a story of your wild Moroccan men, with sand in their hair and eyes like the evening sun.

Tell me a story -- you're so close I can almost hear you humming in the kitchen, making breakfast with Turkish yogurt and honey, Greek coffee and popeyes the way Steve makes them because we both miss him today. The white walls are shining in mid-morning sun, it's Tuesday... today I will work at the bar, serving drinks and blowing kisses to tourists, and you will lounge in the hammock next to the beach. Your favorite boy of the hour will bring you cool beers with lemon. You can read Proust. Or maybe today, you will not read, you say and laugh s the bread crisps and yum takes over the kitchen. "Maybe today, I will a get a little dog for company."

Maybe today.

Tell me a story. You're so close I can smell you. You're so close.

050709

I'll sleep in sunlight
go to bed with the moon humming
low in my ear sky
with blue scratches and wee babes waking
thier parents before the sun.
I am an in-between moment --
I am promises popping like
fireworks in fog,
holding color, dripping light
across a thousand scattered faces

Liebe, how do you fall asleep writing
with the pen in your hand

the cat's purring

I want Wednesday off. I want to go to the beach with a stack of books and sandwiches and beer.
I like all of these things.

I am cactus shade in the desert
to cool your feet;
chewed upon to quench thirst,
never mind the spines.

Death's a Friend

Delirious atrocities, delicous in its intricacies
emanating from focused candle meditation an
awning under which we fall to sleep, drawn swiftly
towards the spectre of adolescent love and
hidden jewels meant to remain so

in another world, he took a shell to his eat,
softly murmuring the lack of passion for his

art of war.

Fresh among newborn hags, frizzled and haggard
romping in arbors of wine grapes and
in amongst the angels, towards an
effect unknown to cause and weeping weeping to
never land and the broken promises Peter made, as
destined he was to only leave us angry with our siblings

while simultaneously holding out for true love's kiss.
Awakened by dreams of hands legs elbows
in between soft lips and tongues so
torn affronted with decision, we flee
initiated into unhappy cults of marriage
nary lying tiger soft at pit's bottom, seeming
gregarious in nature, eve, but hiding heart's true purpose

nearly eons later, we'll emerge, suckled by
enemies of what our truth stood for, reaching
amicably for friends, groping roughly in the dark,
realising no one is left but our own emptiness
by way of who we forced ourselves to love,
young and reckless and careless with each other.