Voices in Space

My shadow knows all my secrets

he follows me everywhere and hides in the dark.

As is the nature of shadows.

He hides and he watches

but most of all

he judges.

She speaks like Daisy Buchanan 

her every word is spoken 

with too much breath

gestures purposefully graceful

eyes lidded

she knows that they look at her

I hate her

because she knows

I hate her

because they do not look at me

Considering my life events, if paranoia were my only residual problem, I'd be the luckiest bitch alive. You have to admit this makes pretty good sense, coming from a crazy person.

I guess I'd forgotten I was talking to the law, and this wasn't the first time I'd had to school them on how no stalker worth his weight in cummed-on doorknobs will ever choose a victim you'd believe.

The lesson, and my insights, were sadly wasted on such official morons. I felt more stupid still for hoping the same action repeated would procure an alternative result. It seemed clear only I could protect myself, and so

A. I logicked that no man incapable of respecting my boundaries respects his own.

B. He told me his real name on the first (cough) date.

B. Google can be my friend too, if I ask nicely.

A. Raw pork in the venilation system sends a more distinct message than inarticulate cops.

I'm actually kidding. I had no time for such fun in the shitstorm of retribution following my cutting his obsessive ass off. Neither am I of a temperament to prolong my own suffering by serving just desserts to those destined to be stabbed by trannies anyway.

I don't have to tell you he installed key-logger on my computer while purporting to help me with my internet. I don't have to tell you he hijacked my accounts, bought my domain name, posts as me, opened a Facebook, and requested all my friends, citing my real self as the fake. I was evicted on the basis of his advertised promises on my behalf, using my pictures, and did not get my deposit back. All manner of authority was alerted to my unprovable (and largely reabsorbed) ulterior income. The list frigging goes on, the screen adaptation of the horrors being off the mark by a million points of less glossy reality.

I used to think the immediately fixated must likewise detach abruptly,  but it's been seventeen months, and I am still insignificant enough to warrant fifty posts a day. To me that's bad math, but then I never finished high school.

I'd remain in ignorance happily to return this learning experience for cash back or store credit. Lord my hair grows grey, but I still like myself at the end of the day. I'm hell luckier than shit bastard that way.

What happened on west Gardener way?

Was it a car or a cat I saw?

Is life,

Never odd or even?

To this I’m,

Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard,

Alas,

Although this life may hand me lemons,

There I find,

 Might be a melon of thought,

Yet I find,

There is,

No lemon, no melon.

Satan! Oscillate my metallic sonatas!

So that I may breathe the life of God,

But yet,

One of pity and a shepherd of none,

Breathing a sigh,

 Not divine.

“Live evil.”

That,

 Was whispered in my ear,

Able was I ere I saw Elba,

Where the emperor was thrown.

Tis life,

But In life,

Uncertainty shall do also.

I rise before the ashes!

Swept through the floorboards to the earth!

Singing winds of change,

Trembling through the graves,

A spark,

A signal,

Back to my mind,

On the street again; not in mirth,

I’m in a moment of awe,

What happened on west Gardener way?

Did the cart pass in the dimming day?

“Maybe” I ponder,

While on this street I wonder,

With the raven caw,

Where I quote,

“Was it a car or a cat I saw?”

When the fox caught the bear,

He gave quite a scare,

He pointed around and twiddled about,

Till he could scare no longer.

“HaHa” I heard,

What tis of thee?

Caw the crow,

‘Til swallowed by the sea.

When reason ran out,

Like the southern dried well,

We drank ‘til our fancy,

Was tickled so swell.

The Fox and the bear,

That could bear no longer,

Maybe he shouldn’t care,

But the wine was still stronger.

It was fair to dare,

What he saw no longer,

When after all,

The fox ate the pare.

So to the bend,

As our story ends,

There still will be no bear,

Who tried to care?

For what he said to end,

When replied “Mania my friend”,

There was no party,

Or goodbye,

So drink up,

Till the wine is no longer,

Hearty.

A roaring river,

One that slams the rocks,

Clashing gods that battle the road,

Slitting slithering’s upon the buck-skin remains,

Floating sculptures, white in content.

This day of thine,

With the water and pine,

Flows to the right,

Drifts to the left.

Crippled,

Blood-shot eyes,

Dulled thoughts and make-shift dyes,

Wild, eerie smiles,

Scattered voices.

Scavenger ravings,

A mountain so high,

Omit forced cravings,

Dreaming of pie.

Man approaches,

But beast stands,

Soul atrocious,

Yet alone in the land.

One makes two,

Then hunger about,

Now two makes one,

The dinner is done.

One births a pod,

What a crafty Façade!

Milking the mind,

Till a million,

One will bind.

One in the forest,

Three men in the head,

Until with a rope and an arm,

Will make one dead.

Little Boy Blue
Do I know you?

Should I know the moon mind
of you, in you?

Ungrateful Heartthrob, do you fear the vulnerable you
when another moon mind
touches and sweeps linear
inward to vast empty spaces
where the nuclei of your mind may not exist

But in dreams you fantasize
as if to awaken you – loneliness disappears
into the shush, into another night dream
leaving behind the other moon mind
who watches and waits
stultified by dark stasis
motionless as stars

Did you lose the meaning in your dash across the paper
in an armour of steel that guards your dream of dreams
a metallic body oblivious to your rhythmic stings
the celebrity backstab, a spiral dance hypodermically drowning the song
to silent screams   from your disillusioned face

Two mindless minds slide and pass
never touching only mimicking

A silver balloon shatters into the night air
dissolving thus disrupts my own dream of dreams:
a million light years away from you

As you sit there in conservative dress
you wait for laws to serve and redress
the profound logic through Life’s sphere

Hollywood, like a distant star
you’ll walk the streets but never get there

I must say I never heard in King Lear’s proposal
coercing such laws to exist
to be followed and worshipped then resisted
by whomever in society do insist
that all is absurd and ridicule then desist

And end the day with a cup of tea.

He's sitting on a shrinking ball, and we're having a conversation. The sound it makes deflating is flatulent, and our tone serious. 

It's bigger than me, and I'm statically charged, so it follows me everywhere I do things. We're smalling it down for the Goodwill at my annoyed insistence. 

He bounces to encourage air escape, while he says his mother's sick. As he describes her symptoms he lowers to the floor until he's sitting on it, in the flat and silent rubber.

After an hour I wonder if I ought to get the air pump.

Wendy Childs wasn't a very lucky woman. In fact you could safely say she was cursed. She always seemed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even as a little girl growing up in a single parent home, Wendy could never catch a break. When she was five she was caught trying to steal a candybar. When she was ten, it was Barbie dolls. By fifteen she had moved up to petty vandalism, and by eighteen she was caught trying to get booze with a fake i.d. At age twenty five she hoped her luck had changed when she met Thomas Chaver's at the strip club she was working at. He had the whole package, rich, good looking, the whole shabanga bang. Or at least it appeared that way at first.

Two months and alot of sex later, Thomas came up with this crazy scam to get all of his dad's money. If Wendy knew one thing, she knew how to be poor, and at the time it sounded like a good plan. Of course when you're high as a kite twenty-four seven; anything sounds like a good idea... Even murder.

"We'll just cut the brake line on his Jag. He drives that car everyday. Eventually all the fluid will leak out, and the old ape will take a plunge off a cliff. Easy money. Tommy sounded so confident. So damn sure of himself. That's why she fell for him... Even when he treated her like shit. Even when he hit her that one time. Even when they accidently killed his dad's new wife in the Jag... Even then, she loved the son of a bitch.

Wthe truth reared it's ugly head, and Mr. Chaver's found out about what his son tried to do to him. He decided to cut all ties with him. Thomas thought when his old man frze his assets, that the worst had happened. No, it wasn't until Thomas decided that Wendy should take the fall for the whole fiasco, that his fate was sealed. You see, not only did his dad want to take all of his son's money. He also wanted to take his very life. That's why he called a man named Donavan. A man who had a reputation for getting rid of... Unwanted annoyances.

So Donavan sent one of his best to take care of this problem. An assassin by the name of Gwen Wiley, and fortunately for her; when Wendy put that stiletto heel in Thomas's skull. The job was already halfway done.

"W...Who the fuck are you?" Wendy asked as she fearfully gazed at the black masked intruder.

"Nobody you want to screw with. Good job by the wat," Gwen said playfully.

Wendy darted for the room door, but Gwen took out one of her throwing knives, and threw it with pinpoint accuracy. The knife ended up stuck in the door four incehs away from Wendy's head. This of course stopped Wendy in her tracks.

"Please don't run. It annoys me." Gwen said.

Wendy turned around with her eyes closed. "What do you want?!" Her body was shaking as she said that. When she opened her eyes Gwen was no longer in front of her.

"A little cooperation," Gwen whispered in her ear from behind.

Wendy almost had a heart attack when Gwen did that. Gwen put her arm around Wendy, and pulled the knife out of door, then she put it to her throat.

Her voice was soft, but as sharp as a razor. "You have only one chane to live. This can be either a fake suicide, or a real double homicide. Either way I'm leaving the way I came in. Can you say the same?"

Wendy shook her head no.

"Do you want to live?"

Wendy nodded yes.

"Then your going to do exactly what I say right?"

Wendt nodded yes.

"Good. Now, when I let you go your going to bring the trashcan by the nightstand over close to the body."

Wendy nodded yes again, and Gwen let her go. Wendy did exactly what Gwen said. As Wendy did this, Gwen put the knife away and pulled out her silenced pistol.

"Aliright now I want you to pull the shoe out of his head, and put it in the trashcan." Gwen ordered.

Wendy looked at her.

"Oh don't tell me your too good to pull it out. I mean you were the one who put it there in the first place."

Wendy turned back to the task at hand, and slowly pulled out the high heeled shoe. She could barely move it.

"It's stuck," she said.

"Stop being a baby and pull it out. Your life dependes on it." Gwen raised the pistol.

When Wendy saw the gun she found new strength and quickly pulled the shoe out of Thomas's head. The crunching, sucking sound it made sent cold shivers up her spine. She then started to cry, as she carefully placed it in the trash.

Gwen put the pistol up against her forehead. "Do that shit on your own time, not mine." Gwen said coldly.

Wendy quickly straightened out her face. "Now what?"

Put your other shoe in the trashcan."

Wendy did as she asked.

"Do you have a change of clothes here?"

"Yes."

"Put them on, and put your dress in the trash too."

Wendy reluctantly unzipped the dress and placed it in the trashcan. She then put on a pair of ripped jeans, a Harley Davidson T-shirt, and a pair of brown sandals. Gwen took the plastic trash bag out of the can and tied it up tight, and stowed it away inside her outfit. Gwen saw Wendy's purse lying on the bed and snatched it up.

"Hey that's my..." Wendy stepped towards Gwen, and Gwen's gun stopped her midstep.

GWen took out Wendy's drivers license, and read it aloud. "Weny Childs. Okay Wendy, this how we're going to play this. Pack up whatever shit you got and get the hell out of here. Don't look back, and do not tell anyone what went down here. Do that, and you live. If not then the cops will find your lifleless body hanging next to this bag of evidence. Do we have an understanding?"

"Yes. Yes ma'am." Wendy started picking up her things. She didn't have much to gather. As she was getting her things, she heard the hammer on Gwen's gun cock back. Wendy froze.

"The bitch lied to me," Wendy thought to herself and began to pray to whatever god whould hear her at that moment.

Gwen pulled the trigger and Wendy yelped.

"What the hell is wrong wirh you?" She asked as she removed the silencer from the pistol.

Wendy looked over at Thomas's body and saw a fresh bullet hole where she had struck him with the shoe before. Gwen placed the gun in his hand, and looked back at Wendy.

"What?" Gwen asked.

"Nothing... It's just that, shouldn't we give him his last rights?"

"Are you a priest?" Gwen asked.

"No."

"Then shut the fuck up." Gwen stood up and mumbled something under her breath.

Wendy grabbed her backpack and looked down at Thomas again.

"I'm sorry it enede like this Tommy. I guess you didn't love me the way I loved you... Fucking bastard, I would've done anything for you!" Her anger sounded familier. Gwen realized she felt the same way about Donavan.

"My mom was right." She wiped some tears away. "I deserve better than you. I'm going to find it. You hear that Tommy, you prick? I'm going to find love."

Gwen was at a loss for words. One part of her wanted to put a bullet in this broad to shut her up. While the other half could relate to her pain. Even if she was breaking up with a corpse. After Wendy said her words she turned to walk away.

"Hey," Gwen got her attention.

Wendy turned around, and saw Gwen put her finger to her lips. "Shhh."

Wendy nodded in agreement, and turned back towards the door. But before she opened the door she turned around again.

"I just wanted to say..." But gwen was gone, there was only an open window.

"Thank you." Wendy walked out of the room and closed the door behind her, and she never once looked back.

Later that Chuck's truck pulled up to the Seven Wonders bar and grill. He walked inside and spotted Gwen in a dark corner of the bar, downing a shot of vodka. She took out a pack of cigarettes, and placed one in her mouth. Before she could even light a match, a small pistol was put to her head.

"That's not funny... Chuck," Gwen said with the cig still hanging from her lips.

Chuck smiled and put the pistol to the tip of her cig and pulled the trigger. There was a flash, and a flame came from the barrel of the gun lighting the cigarette.

"I can't believe you let your guard down." He then felt something tapping on his crotch. He looked down and saw Gwen's knife pointed towards his midsection.

"Who said I let my guard down?" Gwen took a pull from her cig.

Chuck sat down and poured himself a drink. He gulped it down quickly, and slammed the glass down.

"So how did the job go?"

"It went... Thomas is dead, and there's one less asshole in the world," Gwen pured another drink. "Your intel was wrong. He showed up early, and I had to improvise."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. So how are you doing?" Chuck poured another drink.

Gwen rolled her eues and took another puff. "Look, your my guardian. I think there should be certain lines you shouldn't cross."

"Oh are we talking about lines now. This coming from the woman who..."

"Don't say it, Gwen replied cutting him off.

Chuck looked at her. Gwen was very pretty. The kind of pretty that doesn't have to tryt hard to be pretty. She had mocha colored skin, green eyes, and a body built for sin.

"What the hell are you gawking at, you fossil?" She said staring daggers back at him.

"Your a good looking girl. I don't see why your acting like such a pussy about this.You just need to grow a pair, and move the fuck on," Chuck downed the drink.

"There is so much wrong with what you just said." She took another pull from the cancer stick. She noticed Chuck was still staring at her. She sighed.

"Okay, how do I get you to go away?" She said.

"I know I get on nerves. It's only because..."

"You care about me. I get that. " Gwen said.

It took Chuck by surprise. "Do you?"

"Dammit..." Gwen smiled a little and ran her fingers through her hair. "Chuck I'm trying to get drunk her. I don't need to be talking about this shit."

"Why not?"

Gwen reached for the bottle of vodka, but Chuck took her hand.

"Why not?" He said again. Warmer this time.

Gwen shook her head. 

"You know the funny part?" I saw a woman break up with a dead man tonight. She said what she had to say, and she walked the fucked out. I was actually envious of her."

Chuck thought for a minute. "You ever thought maybe, you ought to do the same... Minus the corpse," Chuck let go of her hand, and poured them both a drink.

"You make it sound easy."

Chuck laughed, and gulped the drink down.

"Easy is taking a guy out from two hundred yards with a PSI sniper rifle. Hard is dealing with the person right in front of you. The person holding your heart. That shit is hard."

Gwen was quiet for a moment. "You ever been in loved?"

"A few times. Nothing as disastrous as what your involved in." Chuck snickered.

Gwen squinted her eyes at him. "What was her name?"

"Sarah. Sarah Lane."

"So what happened to her?"

"She faded away..." Chuck suddenly looked off into space. Like he was remembering something. Something bad.

\ Gwen decided to change the subject. "So did you here what Jesse Jackson said about Obama?"

"Can you believe that shit?" You know I almost blew him up once?"

"Stop. Your such a fucking liar." Gwen smiled.

Seriously, I literally had the bomb attached to his car when I got the cancellation call. My hand to God."

They shared a laugh as they continued to talk, and drink the night away.

A few hours Gwen woke up in her bed at the hotel room. Her head felt like it had been gnawed on by rats all night.She slowly got up out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. She looked in the mirror, and almost didn't recognize herself. All she could taste in her mouth was vodka, and vomit. And for some strange reason she smelled poop.

"Ewww. What is that?" She said.

"That would be me." She heard chucks voice.

She turned her head to the side, and to her hung over horror; she saw Chuck sitting on her toilet, reading her morning paper... Taking a shit.

"Could you please pass the toilet paper?" He said sheepishly.

11:02 a.m. Another morning. Another sleepless night. Normally days would whirl by in one never ending blur for her. Not today though; today was special. And not your average birthday, holiday, happy special, no. Today would mark the beginning of her forced attempt to fix and cure something that wasn’t broken, or ill.

Pigeons uniformed in grey strut like sentries across the rooftops’ ledge surrounding mine.  I sleepily spy them through the defused morning light streaming through our barred window.  Their metallic badges of green and purple flicker as they patrol the New York skyline and I know… I am safe.

As you sit there now
eating my cremains

with a gleam in your eye
I see you’ve updated
your profile picture
with a mug shot

Flamingos in an empty chat room
scream your name
no one can hear them

death is the ultimate
silent treatment

It’s hard to believe
I wrote this
in sunshine

I’ve got your number
stuck in my forehead

It lets me eat
your tainted leftovers

Troubling her like sleep, like waters. A ripple walks across her shifting mind, so she stops, stands, waiting. For you to turn back, and see her, in time.

Alone in you gone is her love. It inhabits ache where are no means of measurement. You used to fit between her chin and lap, providing scale.

What there wasn't then fed you while it starves her now. The dearth was superficial when you had her, all. A curl around you on a hard floor, somewhere, knowing she could suffer, and knowing nothing else but that she wouldn't let you. 

And now. They tell you your survival is a maladjustment. The good thing in you of her. The strong thing free of unrelenting repair.

She has no space to say that they couldn't have been there, seen you brightly playing, while a train dragged you both through winter prairie. Every window frame the same uncertainty replayed, until night came. You moved silent through space, suspended by transition.

You fell asleep in her imagination, and woke up in another life, thriving.

Sing, canary, feeling. This mine's a grave. Coal and gold dust the same sunless time face. Remember shadows on a flagstone that delineated passage? It has been an age. Mine, yours, over ever, squared.

It's too late.

It's too early to blame time for wasting. There's a half-life of memories left not to make.

Spend it like yesterday I held you safe, today still promising together, perfect fiction for not been written blank yet. 

Your talent could brush me away, brush pain into canvas, where it would stay, and I write it naked, starveling gray. I look for your face when I forget what day it is again. Your memory will always be my calendar.

I bought one blank to pencil dates into, but only had a pen, so made no entries. Now time can start when life begins. From that point I resume creation.

Here a childless mother reproduces birth.

close your eyes    now

    imagine the bass

            its moan        the moon

        your snare    its smack

the ocean's tide

            the signs

        that mar your silence

        gasps drawn

with uncertain strokes

up hillsides    unpaved by

    winters        relentless 

        as your hands     your tongue

                    drum-drum-drumming 

            between my thighs        my knees

    scabbed    from a recent fall

            rolling wheels

        indignant    with rust

    beneath a sky    quick 

            with bolts    of    

        lightning    curtains 

velvet thunder clapping    like 

    what I hope    will come

            following the hush

        the    rush of

    rain    into gutters 

        swirling        luminescent oil spills

                like nervous chatter    thick 

            as    murky rum

intentions        crimson pulse flush murmurs:

                            así    así    así           

It's hard not to approach you on social media under my alias. I do it out of interest in myself I'd be obscure without. This isn't an excuse.

I never resemble how I'm seen, known, unknown, mistaken, discovered, and forgotten. You are often all that's interesting about me.

Envious, I let you think whatever is most comfortable for you. I tell myself this is because it's not a symbol's place to disabuse rumour, thereby fantasy, hope, projection, and transcendence.

We're held apart by hate. We're held apart by idolatry. The universal is the holding apart. The distance between you and that person whose circumstances you can't or are unwilling to imagine is the same whether they're famous or a homeless schizophrenic. You can still measure it when moral and commercial totems fail, or standards of mass manufacture prove inconsistent.

Neither distance embraces you, and without that embrace you are predestined to nothing, so limitless and flexible, unlike an ideal. A frightened child invents phobia or fantasy, a population hysteria and heroes. I still think more of my audience than I do myself.

The conclusions one draws for lack of information volunteered is a social research goldmine. You put everything, including yourself into that encompassing maternal void, beginning with the least valuable. It's tactics on my part to neglect you, but it's also something less than that: I must be sure the shape nothing takes doesn't look like me.

You are my rectal thermometer, and I am yours.

This is a mother-lovestory.

Crosswalk talkers say a lot about us all. 

Two in labels waiting with me, and one wonders what's with all the special ed cases around here? She meets with approval for her littleness in tittering, and then the light changes.

We cross, and I answer, since it was a question. It's clear they're from better digs in how their mouths drop open ugly.

Satisfied, in my own mean way, I continue to my destination.

A woman who peed herself six years ago makes small talk with her least supportive voices. To be better people than Coach and Burberry, The Twat Sisters, I encourage the schizo by replying from my own alienating lexicon. 

Rather than measure my success, I venture home, where my toaster greets me. My oven asks how it went at the specialist's. I groan and open the fridge, which contains a meatball and some lemons gone bad. I close it again, and it ignores me. We are not on speaking terms at present.

The News comes on, spotlighting a fund-raiser. I recognize the broads.

Up there they look earnest. I know if it got around that empathy is easy to fake, no one would bother caring anymore, so I shut up next time I have a point to make.

They’ve turned Music
into Television
it’s dancing
in front of me

Oh that video
the weird beauty contest
it used to be so good
before it was absorbed

the lame threshold
is crossed

Descend into
a funky tunnel

the scenery
hangs gigantic

a box of fur
done up in white
buys you a ring
a beautiful thing
what does it mean?

Audio demons
with their big lame triumph

Remember
my Here
is your There

the myth is true
brains climbing the trees
looking for their faces
as Marlin Perkins
catches a
Party Animal

He invented some language:

Overflowing clouds hang through
geometric depths confound
patterns everywhere

poisoned paths beckon
those in search of direction
possible centers spread from their source

webs spun through time
disappearing into triangles

accepting what the rest always ignored
now, so we believe
their force will be felt

Tricked into thinking it was glory
derailed by fear
routed by a common problem
life forms, so it stands


Kevin, you are a “funny man”

(Stable States)   

Love lies
like chains
pulling you down

She is my nightmare

she engulfs my living god
I overcame silence
and then I really freaked out

what’s with the new stupidity

our love is a poison
with body language translators

I shift my changes
on violin planes
live in agony
friend, this time
exist by yourself
I’ll stop
but I don’t like it

In come
psychotic deviants
out mutter their words
out think themselves
outwalk their footsteps

one becomes stone
one becomes a totem god
one leaves to invent new worlds
one enters stable states

one has overlapping eyes
one hid in imagination
one melted in the darkness
they play with my conscience

I wonder if the stars judge us for what we do beneath them
Silhouettes of good girls walking the streets on a Wednesday evening
Faces masked by makeup and sunglasses to prevent demons capturing the truth hidden behind the lines of mascara
She planned to be a sinner tonight
Committing sins under the midnight sky with a soul who's inner lining doesn't exist
Whispering into the ears of the victim beginning to become prey
Beady eyes of a man whose fantasy was fulfilled in a dark alley for five minutes & a twenty dollar bill
I never understood how could you trust a man whose eyes can go from green to gone in a single night
The stench of another human upon the flesh of a beauty
Between the moans the aura of worthlessness escaped the tongues rolling off into a sweet air of lust
Scratches against the brick wall carving a name to prevent her life from being taken again
Bodies grinding together like the
rhythm of our ancestors beating the Earth's floor escaping to freedom
Chains of broken love locked between the legs of a abused girl who longs to find the heart of a true man
Emotions hidden away the two part ways without the thoughts of seeing each other ever again
Neglect of the wednesday night she searched meaningless for her soul among the many emotionless bodies on the wet streets of Paris
Steady rain gently washed away the thoughts and secrets of Thursday plays
The sound of heels clicking amongst the church floor
going to ask God forgiveness of the previous night some say
A saint isn't someone who is perfect but often forgives their actions due to fate

   In the moment you begin

To unravel            

                  Unbecoming

      Like bourbon-sick women

         Off-kilter and spinning

            Like two home-made kites 

               Caught in an unkind wind

                           Don't stop

Picture wash 

   On a fence in a field      

         And feel a longing instead

                As the colors grow dim

      Remember:   spring is near

The draught might encourage you

   To pull your coat closer

            And if you are wise

                     You might listen

         Bow your head       and

      Begin again on foot

   Past a parade of strangers

                     In couplets

                  And quartets

            Until you meet a man

               With October-bitten eyes   

            And a face you happen to know

         From the second-to-last life you lived     

                  Shake his hand

            Don't be shy

He knows everything

         You mean

                  And do

He is here unloosening ends

               Much like you       and

            Sooner or later

You'll come to a cross in the road

      And wait for the light to go green

         A woman will pull you into a corner 

            To ask you for the time

   You'll note:

         Her ravaged teeth

            Her cabbaged hands      

                     And the putrid unkempt

                  Scent of Time unfurled

                           Your lip might curl   

                                    But            don't run

               Smile and say the words:   "it's half past one" 

                     Then try not to think of the boy with the gun   

            He is not her

      She is not you 

You are only One      of

   Ten Thousand Things

         Follow what is natural

               Unchanging and in motion

   There is a Way

            Same path

         Some destination

The train is due at twelve

     Past nine          

We wait

     As if for the end

          Of the world

We wait

     Drink milk

               You lick your lips  

     Your tongue

Makes me think of dandelions

               For no good reason at all

When we were young

     We used to pluck them in hoards

          Just to snuff them out and watch as

               What was     would cartwheel

                    Across the yard

                         And sky

I think of white dresses

                    And

               Miss     my sister 

A man nearby laughs

     Much too loud

The pocket of silence that

          Follows

     Fidgets the crowd

And you smirk

     I rarely see you

          Smile

I cross my arms    

     Attempt to cross my eyes

               You stifle a pull

          At the corners of your mouth

My watch announces:

     The train is late

Nothing to do     but wait

I've committed your cell phone number to memory. Just as I have your smile and the way you flick cigarette after cigarette out car window and the coarseness of your palms passing iPod to Haley, iPod to Jace, to Haley, iPod to Jace, back to haley, to dashboard. 
I've committed your obsessions to my thoughts. Day in and day out on rewind, fast forward.
You told me I remind you of Lena Dunham.
You told me I remind you of a New Mexican version of that one autobiographer addicted to weight loss pills.
"Oh, God, no, Haley, I meant it in a flattering way!"
And I was flattered that you picture me as a famous anorexic.
You had nearly the complete collegtion of the Esopus books and I marveled at how immaculate your bedroom was until I stepped foot into it.
It was as if...
Time machine.
Edge of the universe.
All bets off at this point and were you coming with me was the question.
I sifted through issue after issue of gaudy art magazine, trying to find the perfect visual poetry to describe the day we shared.
I found it, by the way.
Issue nine, I think, one of those poems in which the artist scribbles out all words on the page except for the perfect handful.
And it goes:
"Is this body bewildering enough for anyone, even the air?"
Is it?
Because I look at you, scrawny.
You said you'd gone to the gy once in the past three months.
You said you'd been drinking your liver to solid stone.
You said. The only source of nutrition you ever got was from the marijuana you licked off your fingers after packing a bowl.
And I look at you and I see
Flawless. 

At the page's turn, some thought

Impossible   to capture in words

At the eye's periphery, some

          Flurry of movement

Some voice   vaguely 

Touched   with the past,          then gone

A sprinkler awakens   in the night

Moths flutter   towards a light

   Mounted on crumbling stucco

          Wires exposed

       Do they know the risk they take?

              Are they ignorant of their Fate? 

                     Are they playing the odds, hoping

To be amongst the lucky ones?

Black
Robins
are

playing
at
Noon
they’re
in
evening
stars

More
of them
Lost on
Each
moment

Free
up
new
Gods
under
stars

At
my
old
notice
get
us
someone