over here

and what about you?
you’ve stopped venturing outside.
so how could you know
the loneliness of stones or
comprehend the hope of streams?

having loved these less
than your quietness and grief,
do you remember
seasons still? the feel of moss?
come out. find me in the woods.

thirty-eight

stop hunting me down,
pinning me down, breaking down
the gates. i’m tired.

recognition

it happened three times today, i thought it was you.
the clearest, the one time i was really sure
was in the spray of fumes and water
when the bus stormed past, there across the street
just rounding the corner. your shoulders,
your black jacket. your inappropriate hair.
who hasn’t stared after a stranger,
felt the foolish urge to yell and make a scene?
because it wasn’t you at all. not even close.
you’re somewhere else. i know what you’re doing.
i have to reason to look for you here, to shout.
but what if it was? what if it had been?

lack

i lack the quick sharp feel of success
that i have felt at other times,
a barber’s razor lightly held against the neck.
nor do i have the sense of a good stick
picked up along an old trail
and held swingingly for years and years.
i cannot catch the scent of foreign food
that used to line the street, my stoop,
my stairwell when the relatives came calling.
not my razor. not my relatives. not even
my stick, for i left it reverently along another trail
when i moved to the city, positioning the find
just so within the brush and briars. to see it
someone will have to be looking.
and now these things i did not own are gone –
what is that to me? what is this creeping grief?
this emptiness? this wandering among unfurnished rooms
and wishing to go back, to have appreciated before losing,
to have known what it was that the universe was giving me?

thirty-seven

crackers in my throat:
gravel among melting snows,
hastily swallowed.

emphasis

the potato chip. the plastic baggie. the wallpaper sample.
some things deserve an ode, but are somehow beneath us.
we (oh the great us-ness of it all!), we shall appear before
our descendants trailing high fashion, the aperitif, and ten
thousand flashbulb artifacts to suggest that we have truly
lived. life was ours, report the microfiche, and not just some
pedestrian life, but the thing itself, the experience of which
no one after us will know anything but echoes. archives of
grocery line rags will speak it: cower! crawl! remember when!
in this delusion we are most our cruel, petty selves, more
vested in some future projection of our times than in the
trashy here-and-now survival which we pull an hour at a time
from the slow spool of fate. in laundromats and drive-thru
queues we strategize the pulling-off of another great sham,
someplace where many will see, where the humidity is just
right for our hair and where, with any luck, facebook photos
will be taken. all the while, the true pillars of our daily grind
don’t mind our inattention. the instant potatoes and junk mail
coupons realize their essential worth even if we fail to write
and sing their praise. the used carlot. the bag salad. all
the velveteen rabbits of our terrestrial life realize that one
day, having served their turn, they may push through at last
into the eschaton of the real. the loved. odes notwithstanding.

thirty-five thirty-six

i notice you more,
now. here. new ironies crowd
the old hermitage.

train wrecks, free concerts,
long goodbyes link back in time
to you. more and more.

brute

so i have said something limited. so what?
linens snapping on the line, the placid look of wine
set aside hours ago in favor of a lover’s arms,
the heat of your face sending unspoken accusations,
the rise and fall of the weeds or autumn leaves or
commuters, like tides pulled by the rising falling sun:
in the face of these and everything significant i am inarticulate
and must resort to the crude mimings of our youth.
do not mock. remember: as i ape the human faculties
i am mocking no one, neither you nor myself. i am only
pushing, arced in full contractions as i push and push
the stubborn words, driving down the sense of things and
hoping for some sign that something has come out not entirely
misshapen, that someone else has held it and has understood.

thirty-four

three small moles hold on
to your neck, staking their claim,
a lonely outpost.

thirty-three

i would crawl in there
to say i like you. perhaps.
if it weren’t so dark.