Hannah (rev'd)

i.

in a deep, inky darkness, a dance hall, shrouded
with smoke, the smell of beer, Hannah sits and listens

to the striking confessions of
a soul not yet taught to dance.

when the smoke fades, she does not
hesitate. she moves, like a chess piece,

to checkmate. your move:
when there already is none left.

she says, i can't stop thinking
about you. i've got to see you.

her intensity can be mistaken for
drunkenness, her confusion for inadequacy.

she will tell you herself,
i am a woman who is deeply troubled.

the connection drops. the gloaming,
set in rough velvet, makes the voices lower,

into static on the phone. Hannah remains,
after each loss - that's how you can turn away.

the fens remember only the clicking
of her heels, an impish sound, unsteady

in rhythm, still a prayer, still that
insistent cry of more life, more life.

ii.

like Hannah, i cannot stop thinking.
God. God, i am still here, as you are

still here. and that yearning, wanting to be moved,
is all i have left, after friends, lover

after lover have been lost, after those
insistent cries. more life. more.

i am small now before you, a black dot
on the pure, starch snow, still wrestling

with the split mind state that is the condition
of my existence: i will keep losing, you, even.

but loss must be recoverable. Hannah could
give up much: a first love,

a second, a firstborn, his memory of her.

but i just want to wake up again.

Waiting

finally, there is no rhythm to the tides anymore.
when they come in, they are tired, hurried, eager
to leave again.

i am waiting for the tides, like the steel wool
thunderclouds, flattening themselves
into sheets as they reach shore.

listen now: this is the tide, an unfamiliar engine roar
tamping itself down on landing, undecided, roaring back.
this is the storm, here, already: no more waiting for it

to come to pass.

On Being Lied To

Yes, tell me what this is.
This thing that I do not understand,
the silence that embraces you, perfect
and very still, with no space for sideway glances.

A globe of very finely blown glass, a terrarium
for the arachnid that lives at the molten
core, a scratchy little fucker with powder
hair on its legs, for balance I'm told,
always sussing out how to keep
the core molten but cool to the touch.

Listen, I say, gravity is the answer. Mercury.

No, you say.  Overweight luggage incurs fees.
You'd rather sublimate, fill it up with exhale after exhale,
the slightly sweet, slightly acrid wisp of metabolized
alcohol, volatile in the night.

(ed. Jan. 8th, 2014)

Fragments: Lavender (for Joe)

i.

i planted the seeds, lemon balm, spearmint, lavender.  the precise
pockets of air, which i would hope them into, or perhaps forget,
stamped out in circles.  each pale thud
the eraser end of a no. 2 sinking into soil.
the other end - leaded with graphite, but no
less - was too unyielding for such a task,
the eventual flesh of it baring teeth early and demanding give.
i comply.

ii.

the green judgment that unfurls around
me in gloaming and twilight, drawing
vermillion to the surface of this body for that
lovely flash of contrast casually epitheted
youth, do not extend to any part of
my hands.  they are warm, winking -
halted by an other inexperience.

iii.

grow, you little - , grow.
i cajole, plead, breath catching when i see the soil making way.
i will rain upon you, a prophesy, and you do not
have an ark - or imperative, agency, facility.
grow your roots, down, deeper, and stand tall.  do not die
a parched death in the flood like that lavender.  oh you - !

iv.

i won't, no one will, give you more than
this - but it is more, always, than what you can survive.
so survive harder.  you must
grow tall, thick, strong.  push, push, twist towards the light,
it fades at six, it shan't suffice but it will have to do.  stand
like a tree and not what you are, what might have been carried
away with a gust, what might have withered without a glance.

v.

some day, not today but soon, i will
bow - prone on the sonorous floor - and
lay down my respects, not in front of the empty
container but in front of your might.  in consideration of the weight i feel
in my hand (still not yet green?) when i clutch you, pull leaves off you,
shake you, the time and times you have asked for, understanding my compliance
for the command it was meant as, i will
answer and give you more space; more love; more.

Berlin, a First Visit

there was the notion of a child, when i

saw that photo of you leaning against the graffitied

train station wall in berlin, i thought, yes.

before what i could comprehend, the turn of

the days, where i wear your clothes but travel solo,

where i meet a half-kempt boy in a waschsalon who

pushed his dirty clothes around in a shopping cart, where it hails

in april, hails the size of millets, coming down against the sunlight

behind Brandenburger Tor, the streets littered not with flustered

linden flowers but with the strewn feathers of a flash mob abandoning

itself to a pillow fight, before the icy grains turn into tufts of snow.

it was just such a flash, a whisper that sounded like a statement

but was in fact a cherishing: i'd bear the heaviness

of being fruitful. the sear of having had, i'd bear it for you.

Montuno

remember that trot? those half-inch heels worn down to nails, pressing against

the rounded cobbles and slipping, like when you first sat at a piano and held out two fingers.

you tapped the black keys only, syncopated and sharped, hiding your weak

index finger in the emergent rhythm. years later i will retell this story so that

it was a montuno, a certain steadiness, and not merely the surprise of spilling out from a taxi

into a doorway shadowed by twigs of spring fears, so fresh as to snap before the lifting of dawn.

but that trot, that vervy step you bounced to,

tell me, wasn't it a retreat from the midday heat?

you looked out your window that day in july, and the east was a swath of smoke.

it was a small fire, a first alarm, but a house fire still engulfs a house,

and you couldn't believe how much smoke rushed to the sky,

a farewell. you threw out those shoes, left the trot to those yet to learn

how to make peace with stones too smooth to support the heavy load of want.

what i recall will be the silence in the night, that i still can recall.

The Gravity of It

i.
i met a house painter on the street today
who said to me, step slowly, fall gently,
and when you do, do not get up.

ii.
i think you know. you must, right?
that when i lie down, it's like waking up in reverse, where the feeling
of crashing back to earth in the instant the light
hits my pupils is squeezed into a splinter
of a second, and i hang in the cold steam
of night, suspended, just barely, above my sheets.
i want to let myself splatter, you know i do, i can see it
when i close my eyes, but the tension props me up like a stand
long after my thoughts no longer attempt blankness.

iii.
the feeling is of being pulped. the fear is of being forgotten.
what we get when we get what we deserve is each other.

iv.
i sit in the corner of my bed, and reach out
my hands towards the words tumbling
out of you, your body folded into a pocket across the room.
when you leave, we will return to ourselves,
run through the accusations in our mind, the hideous
truths we dare not let manifest
into compressions of air leaving our lips.
ok then, we say instead, let us you and i stop being alone.