It seems like you and me

have drifted away from

talking to each other in

the past few months.

I think we are like moths

floating from the cedar

tree, a bad taste in our

mouths from the smell

and the strong wind

that carries us away. If

maybe, I could talk to

you again, I might;

though you'd have to

convince me you might

change into something

nicer the next time I

see you so I might be

somehow convinced

or not of your interest.

Because you are so

interesting to me, like

the way a hive is

interesting to bees

or the way sticks are

interesting to birds

building a nest from

scratch. I might

convince myself of

strange fantastical things

in our hour-long flight

into romance, much like

a fox is convinced

the hound is but his

playmate until the polo

horse strikes a wide

deep rut in the mud,

leaving traces of metal

and bone in the fresh earth.

I may come up with the

likelihood of you weeping

o'er my coffin at my funeral

and that will probably determine

whether I ask you on a date

or not. So I'm fairly serious

in a sarcastic kind of way.

But really, we haven't spoken

in ages, and I'm satisfied like

an astronaut that finishes his

freeze-dried meal with a little

bubble of orange juice floating

very close to his nose. Because

fresh vegetables are so hard to

grow in manufactured oxygen,

so high in the air.

Typical Daylight

I think today was made of papier-mache.

It began sticky; a hot crowded subway car

with something sprayed over the seats

like dried urine. I felt it a humorless way

to mark one's territory in a city populated

like matchboxes stacked upon each other.

Two rubbing together might burst into flame

and burn the whole block down. It grew

hotter, more crowded, in a greenhouse

growing adult toys. Each man walking

became stiffer with each step, like a dried-

out Christmas Santa made of papier-mache.

Each woman wore less, much like a fantasy

of adolescent bravado, but in the end it grew

into a liking for toys and gloss and metal

and a one-horse race already won by the guy

outside in the car. So I guess it couldn't

really be worse, but then I got contracted

to work in Santa's shop, and I grew like stiff

like him; stiff as a board with a knot in the

middle, so I actually choked on my tears

as they forced themselves out. Which is what

I did till I realized I was sprinting downhill,

with an angel in my ear, feeling free flying

low without a stock broker's care in the world.

Till I guess I realized that shit don't matter

when I'm not there. That place conveys

feeling, like distance conveys time and

a genie conveys this poem, like an angel

in my ear. Like the sun on the moon.

A Conventional Love Story

You were made for television. Like a pixel

on a vast ocean of screen, you shine primarily

for the sake of other people's lives and tell

their stories with a much brighter intensity

than you live your own. You are sort of like

a really easy game of solitaire, where it all

fits in place to conveniently. Maybe you

even cheat a little, and use the Joker as a

wild card. I think you probably need a little

help when it comes to picking out orange

juice when you go the grocery store. You're

"that type of person." Or, at least you were,

until I got the courage to run across the bar

and talk to you, say things like, "It would be

really lovely if you could find a way to stop

melting my heart like the ice cube in your

too-strong drink right now." Then you laughed

at me, and I think I fell in love. So I told you

that, even though my flannel was not a hand-

me-down, I really cared very little for politics

these days and that although the organic

movement is an important step forward in

national health policy, I still exclusively shopped

at Farmers' Markets to support the even more

important Local Growers' movement. And

I agreed to buy you a drink. Maybe three days

later, when we finally got out of bed, I told you

I would never buy you alcohol again, and you

laughed at me, and maybe that's when I fell

in love with you too. But that's not important,

because we drank apple cider for breakfast. I

was joking about never ever calling you, when

you agreed to move in with me. That was after

the impromptu day at the park when we held

hands everywhere, me begging for a kiss while

you focused more on helping me remember

Chinese characters to graffiti all over a studio

wall the next day. It was a game of twisted

pleasures that we played with each other,

and some sort of marriage, for other than tax

purposes, followed. But I don't think it lasted

all that long, because suddenly you were screaming

at me about how dirty the closet was and I think

I hit you, but I can't be sure. But then you started

crying and I don't think I was in love with you anymore.

That's when I started comparing you to televisions

and radios and the massive consumer culture that

sprang like a weed between our better selves, and

found that our house, the one we built on logs,

had been whittled down to stilts, which was

convenient when the floods of tears came rolling

on through, as they inevitably did. So did doctors,

lawyers, psychiatrists and mass media, who all

dictated our checkbooks for the next few years,

although I did get a fantastic tax refund come

May. Which I suppose is why I didn't talk to you

until I was good and drunk, and why they say,

"Never meet someone in a bar." I know it's why

they say, "In Vino, Veritas," because truly, we

were made to be drinking each other till the

last drop.

Pre(science)

So it must have been the way

you were dripping, all wet,

come from the streambed

like an orange unpeeling

from the bottom up,

that I realized how dead

the smell of summer must be

without your ringlets of hair

tossed onto my pillow every

morning, or the fresh mug

of peppermint tea left steaming

near the napkin holder: my

think tank against the terror

of melodrama and dyslexic

puns. You were like a sunrise,

or a quill pen, or a fresh caught

fish, dancing. And me,

perspiring under the weary

gaze of the sun in his last yawn

before the barbecue sunset,

could only think about how

man must have first made

fire. But the sun crept away,

alighted on the roof, ran down

playground slides of hair

as you turned your back

to whistle the jingle from

the radio, scratch the dog

and fold up the mat to

keep the dirt off the floor.

Text (edit)

If there was a reason I didn't talk to you

after that last time you tried to contact

me, it would be this: I'm too attracted

to you to be your friend. It's not as if I

don't want to be your friend, because

I enjoy doing friend things, like casual

hugs in the hallway, smiling at you across

a dessert table, laughing with you about -

anything. I even try. I'm very noble

about it. I say, Seth, you can just be her

friend. Then we go to a movie. Then

we go out to a diner afterward. And we

close the place. Then we walk back

to the subway, underneath your cloud-

shaped umbrella, pressed close to each

other; a brief osmosis - and you leave me.

I stand by the train, waiting, thinking,

dreaming of a time to come, when

maybe you actually figure it out and

come to me, like a lioness bringing

home the kill. Because that's what

you have done, you have killed my heart

and all I want is to lay in your jaws

and feel the last beats in my body

bleed out this pain, this pain, this pain

of love. I want you to wear me like

a wolf-skin and hold me close to your

softness like firelight. I want the flames

of me licking at you so that it stings

in such a sweet way, like the crisp sour

of a ripe apple in late summer. I want

a small place in your soul to fill up

with the essence of me, just like my soul

is filled with the honey-lime of you. We

could be something untouchable, like

when Seabiscuit beat the field by 31

lengths. So I just cannot be your friend.

Not anymore. I won't settle for anything

less than all of you. And if you saw all

of me, I don't think you'd settle either.

To Grampa

There's been a poem writing itself inside my head for a while.

I didn't know where to put it, because all of the sudden you died

and I was left on the bus, telling you about Shakespeare,

knowing it would be the last time I talked to you about anything.

So I kept living my life, and I found out the day after, cause Mum

called me at work and said, Seth I have something to tell you

and I didn't call back because I knew the news, I felt the news,

the news was in my heart the night before, and even though the next

day you died, you actually departed me when I felt your passing

like an invisible train passing me, my statements of intent

flapping from my briefcase like lost moths in migration. So my poem

kept billowing; and now, I am a menagerie of penicillin memories -

the room with the stars in your old parish house;

the time when Dad jumped on the bed and broke it;

giant-bubble makers in the backyard next to the flowers;

sick with the flu, surrounded by classic car wallpaper;

real candles on a real Christmas tree; sailing the meager

channel to the Chesapeake Bay, always slightly afraid

of your strangeness and detachment from the warm spring wind.

You shook like a Lego a box before you open it, the pieces

rattling around inside like a motor waiting to start. But

I had no directions for you, no step-by-step instructions

on how to understand your miscalibrated conversation,

nor how to cope with your hands as they guided freshly

sanded wood into the final piece. I knew you as someone

permanently ill, which is now the common trait we share.

And a poem, a poem we share, that has been writing

itself since the moment you passed from a bus window

into twilight and sunset itself. You walk without a stutter

and pass like the whisper of a moth's wings in flight.

So Much Mirth

There was, indeed, a time

when snow was easier to

stomach. When we didn't

have to go to work, but

maybe school would be out

and we could stay home

and shape our dreams

out of cold packed ice;

a complete white for us

to become artists,

entertainers, lovers,

magicians, and piece-

keepers of a younger

habit than the black

and white of our elders

and betters.

We are

enveloped in this heaving

darkness, breathing among

the dead souls of our deceased

as we close ourselves in our

shaded rooms, protected

by the light, by the fire,

by the cremation desire

we all feel when winter's

soft hands break upon

our backs like glass

shattered in the air.

Then we utter a prayer.

Pray Mary to save us

God to grace us

Mohammed to guide us

and Buddha to hide us

from the inevitable

wasteland of our blood.

We are stained red,

all of us, all are of a living thing

of a being possessed by the ineffable,

by the inscrutable,

by the rock and the claw

and the hammer and the sword

by sweat and heavy things,

by a world of inert matter

heaving white flakes of chatter

through the air to land upon!

your nose like a whistle in the cold mountain air,

a clarion call to bring my hands to your cheeks,

my breath to your eyes, and my blue to your green.

And in the quiet twilight, how your lips shape themselves

like literature to an illiterate mind. Its snowing, you

whisper, like a deer loping through a foggy field.

Who's snowing?

The children's.