Saturday 17 December 2016

juggle

She tells me I sang nursery rhymes
In my sleep and spoke of a clearing
In the woods. Staying away
from women is hard to do
 when wanting to be touched
Climbs up my throat like a ladder
And that fragile thing takes a long breath.

At the beginning of spring, the rains come,
Throwing flowers down into my lungs.
I stay behind the windows, curling and uncurling blinds
At different hours of the day like a lizard
Turning its body in the sun.
I venture out for food because the refrigerator holds nothing.
Coming back, I see the chimney missing a few bricks
And the birds perched there scattering.

Isa didn’t want me to see her like that.
She wears a smock to the bar.
It's the first time in months
And I’m 3 beers deep because she
was 15 minutes late.
Somebody died, it’s unclear
Because we haven’t quite figured out
How to talk to each other.

She cries when we make love that night
And wakes me in the morning unsatiated.

Later in the week, I drive by the building
That holds her studio on a grey day.
There is a gargoyle juggling stones
That weigh far more than the room I live in.
The red civic behind me honks
And I glance at the angry face backed
By city hall itself, squatting over the scene
Like some great arachnid.
Whose web is this?

Giggling with the last moments of diethylamide
I grabbed my brother’s hand and we fell to the floor
Weighed by the g force of the moment taking off.
“I am no fool about love” I begin,
but something about the lights tells me
this is no time for convincing myself.

There are no pews or knee cushions
for the eyes that look at you while
you look into the distance for something
else

Wearily I see anna pull back her hair
And smile crookedly at her last meeting with the union.
She is going south for love.
She wants to sit by the dogwood trees
And have weekends.
Something about her will disappear though
In those contented moments when she is still.
Some hunger, some void
Into which anyone might throw themselves
Like runners off a cliff face
To fall fall fall before being yanked back
By some bunjee saying “not yet.”

I cannot be the only one for whom
Finally loving something in themselves
Makes it harder to love another
But yet want it all the more.
Or if I am, better to be outted as an asshole
And have others stay away from the remains
Of a person begging for water but never taking a sip.

o go to sleep melodrama, have a drink
And take nyquill. In the morning perhaps
You will feel none of this and you can feign surprise

when you ensnare another you do not love.

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