Edinburgh arrival

12/16
Hello there, do not think it will be easy to get in.
There’s a key on the other side,
Blocking your way.
It grows dark and you are confused.
Next door, the cemetery is silent and wet.
The shops are closed early.
At city center, where the bustle grows
Like a fungus, every language
Curls up the old stone walls.
But your pack is heavy,
2 days heavy with no sleep.
No change, the bus driver says smiling.
———————————-
Aberfeldy hitch

First hold a sign for Perth
A701 south to Edinburgh bypass (45 minute walk)
A720 west to fog at roundabout or straight on to the M8
M8 west to m9
M9 north to m90
M90 to A9 @ Perth
A9 to A827 @ Logierait
A827 to Aberfeldy
——————————————-

When I make it outside again
John Leslie wasn’t serving food
So I head to the old bell inn
All red leather and short wood tables.
Order a 15yr Scapa and fish n chips.
17 pounds. A bundled woman walks in
With a terrier, the two men beside me
Are incoherently drunk and clasping
Each other’s hands very close
To their red faces. It is 6pm.

Later I learn, only one
Was drunk. Tom. 68.
He says two or three words before throwing
The rest away with his hands. He’s 68.
Was in the hazy, now alone. 68. He says
He had 3 sisters, tears fill with eyes behind smudged glasses
How did his fingers get so big, too big to touch eyes.
He pounds his fist. I think he’ll hit me.
I’m sure he’d rather that than cry. After,
I think of where he’ll go. He was wearing
A wedding ring. Still. 68. But it
Was 6pm and he’s too sad for
Me to imagine him home
Anywhere but the old bell inn.
———————————————————
“And it seems like I’ll miss autumn in Edinburgh
That’s the one I should have spent with you—
With the rain lashing down, a fog on the meadows
As the festival lights, as the festival lights go dim”
——————————————————-
At the royal oak
We were joking
About her being a prostitute
Forward limbs in the holiday lights
Two foreigners on a piano bench
Bad teeth. Something about how the fog rises
Outside and the uncollard husky inside
Scratching at the door—
A splotchy man in a turtleneck
Hugging his guitar to his chin
Singing “city of immigrants”
And the whisper of sickness at my
Neck keeping me quiet and
The night could be forgotten one way
Or another but probably
This one.

She was the only sloppy nicotine
Kiss I didn’t want but sometimes
You’ve got a folk tune in there
That doesn’t quite
Fit.

——————
“What are you writing?” She asks —“I’m on
An adventure, look at me
Having feelings and being a pretty lad” then
She hit me in the mouth.
—————————————

Make a big deal about the purpose
Of the trip to a lot of women
A lot of sad women there
And in this room listening to
The pudgey man with the black guitar.
But first thing I do is always first,
Didn’t choose anything, just wanted
Is all. I was quiet enough for her
To project what she desired
And when I did choose 1 book of Scottish poetry
To bring, spent an hour sweating
With my pack in a crowded bookstore—
The poet I chose is from Iran
He never lived in this land
And neither shall I.
Hope is not circumstantial
But constant, not a rain,
But a well
Of purpose.
Here I am sick in the drizzle
Reading the poetry of a young alcoholic
Trying to let down so I can rise
Before dawn.
With the black travel

Day 1 Scotland— in the air

Sitting in Stewart airport 2 hours outside of NYC, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing. I’ve taken two weeks off of work to go to a place I do not know where I know no one and it is cold and I have no plan. I’ve got 20 minutes until my plane boards for another continent.

I got here on 2 buses and a shared cab with 3 people I met on the streets of New York sprinting as we were told there were no more seats on the last bus to the airport. I squeezed my phone with its eboarding pass in sweaty palms. So much for planning.

10 minutes before boarding and I break down and text her, my love, though we agreed we would not speak until February. I love her, she is in all beauty I see. And someday we will know nothing together again.

I am thinking about dying a lot these days. After the synagogue shooting,  butive also always been ready to be attacked. Since I can remember I daydreamed of passers by in the street suddenly turning on me. I’ve thought about what I would do and felt that adrenaline. How’s that for internalized generational trauma?!

I’m thinking about dying in the air, in a car, on a cliff. My ability to decide anything is more important than fear is key to my concept of self and strength. I refuse to be directed by fear alone.

What does this trip mean? 2 weeks in Scotland alone. Is it an escape? A journey closer to the heart? A seeking of distraction? I could go across the world and watch Netflix, could go and sleep with a bunch of women, could go live out of hotels or B&bs or hostels. It is all free and somewhat arbitrary.

I want to see myself, not look away— be nervous, be unsure, figure it out, listen to what my soul wants. I will not do things to not feel bad.

I wrote a few poems that first 36 hour day, here they are—

I’ve got a knack for missing buses,
Early dark nights of uncharted
Destinations, squinting to match.
I’m not the only one— when it’s cold
Our eyes close more than open, mouths
More open than ever to let in light we say,
Arms and legs open such that
They are closed to what we need at times.

What I mean is this:
Nobody has to be on this
180 seat airplane about to cross
The Atlantic at hundred of mph, we each
Made our way here on different flickering
Paths, but here is the same air recycled
Through or lungs, in all of us a glimmering,
That something about the world will be different
When we reach land again.

I’m in love with a kind of love that
Sticks and burns like ice
Spreading— I want a woman
With legs like the sun
And a mind like the churning moon
And lips like fall
And I love her human human eyes.

About to cross a world
Into wild abundance (I hope),
The throaty cry of winter in the highlands
Calling me. But it is her forehead
Against mine I feel, her words
In my hair.

Each morning as I sit in silence
Sometimes naked dripping from the shower
But usually rushed and barely dipped in day,
I release all I do not need,
All that is not me,
All that sorry,
All that pushes and pulls,
All I cannot breathe.

It’s shocking how often
When my breath and heart slow
When the whir of words quiets
Tothe dumb pulse of me—
How often I am left unalone,
With a thousand others who’ve touched
And been touched
We expand and flow with each other.
I feel it for a moment
As we begin to fly.

___________________

Goodnight lights over the Atlantic My grandmothers cousin crashed his plane Into your sharp deep when he was only a boy They found the machine 60 years later And had a ceremony, I’m not sure It was called a burial One Monday night at dinner she Pulls out the letter he wrote her— Young men will always be the same I think—all excitement and lithe bravado At the first taste of the mystery. My seat mate pulls out a half drunk bottle of Tito’s on the plane. We muffle our conversation and eat smuggled chocolates together As the lights grow fewer and The reality that I am on this journey alone Sets in. Tomorrow I will wake amidst the green- Shake of Ireland, and then The gravel led hills of Scotland And no women nor booze nor fight nor story Shall change the moment to moment The ebb and throb. There are practices for the heart But then there is the willingness To sit still To lower the heart down Into the grey chill of real anxiety For a few moments and then draw it out. To feel it, know it by choice, To be in readiness Not fooled by any quick boozy warmth or fantasy. Find a pride in Be ready for this to be it.

Oasis

I was bathing with an old swedish couple,

feet planted in the raw grain of the wooden tub

when the feeling came on, up from somewhere

In the community room of the japanese healing studio in south somerville

Or from the screaming jet pouring its heart out into oceans of sweat

Next to the Jewish lesbian union organizer

Who has just won a 6 week strike.

Flakes of dirt and skin swirl out

And all of it is too hot, steam pushing up

my blood. what life is left for us?

We fight with brittle nails for a place to sink the seeds.

Jake and Sid are dead and their ash seems to cloud the world

Like the gnashing fires of the west.

Our old homefeeling is gone, has packed his bags and fled over the hills.

Yesterday by the old watch tower, i stood still for 45 minutes

As the sky turned pink then grey then swallowed itself

With the forks and knives of the city. Is it supposed

To grow feeble with age, this desire? Or simply more cunning,

Sharper and quicker, to find the veins of this world?

I wonder if any fight is enough to satisfy this beast inside me

That wants to eat Nazis and fuck poets and

Suck the sap from my sweet brothers until we must all die of it

Or else live forever.

I climb out to the trees behind the mountain that stretch on for miles,

And try not to hear the cars, the white noise of sleep.

This society, these thousands of people where the light touched just before

It gave way to shadow, we are crawling into the wet earth of our end.

I feel it when i breathe now, the air is sticky with its gummy pulp.

Try to spend 10 minutes with it sometime,

Between the cold of our arms plunged into a great river seeking to become islands there.

and the creeping pollution of our choices thickening the blood.

Our joy is stung with it, brutal brightness of light that leaves polyps

Of darkness as you blink away in surprise.

As i rubbed my eyes in the tub, muscles all hot

And loose and swollen, i see across from me

The overweight swedish woman has laid her head back

Into her husband’s hand, and her belly rises above the water like

A whale, and her eyes close as her feet leave the ground,

Silked up by her husband,

hands thin and stiff, veins below the skin wandering , curling up around her

Thick limbs like dried flowers. She sighs.

He steps out into the deep

And slowly

Turns her

Back

And forth

And later when i am shaving my face in the steam of the shower

The touch of those hot blades on my neck is too much

And i lose them in the stream.

The gentle holding of that love,

How strange it appears to me, a bright room

I cannot quite make out through a snowy window,

How shocking the tenderness of their shared frailty.

We must move through this world with that too.

First Day

Malden, you smell like donuts,

Gummy sidewalks, and the benches

In front of citizen’s bank where bald

Men in tank tops wait for you to open.

Forgive me my trespasses, it is

My first day. I’ve made it to some

Center ring where the people fly about

Like birds preparing for Janus

And the birds build nests at the top

Of Corinthian pillars. We’ve got

An open floor plan so you can see

Big sky and feel not so old fashioned,

So you can stare off and imagine a woman

In the Philadelphia heat, pulling up her skirt as

She steps over the grass this morning.

In the clocks I wait like moisture, face

Pressed up against some future I might be.

But we are also in the knowledge that

We don't change, the world does, like water

Through a sieve, everything is everything

It was, but different now. And some things,

left behind. I wonder

If I will be happy.

City wind and bus sounds

Store themselves anywhere they can,

Around the corner, in the small of my back.

My family has lived here for four generations.

Who do I think I am

With my blue suede shoes?

summer gone

there is a speed at which

the white of water

and hum of the engine

and slaps of cloth on skin

and wide blue sky fold into one.

we began singing when

we believed, somewhere in our guts

that day lunged forward into night

with open arms, that we were howling

with the wolves of every people.

now the words

are gone, a bright sun behind the veil,

crows following seagulls over

the hill. the family sleeps

in sand, books folded over our eyes like years

spent in cities without hearing

the sound of cedars in the wind. we creak

trying to reach the ones we love,

over wine or whiskey,

plans to get together again

or the few shared perspectives,

our mutual practices, done now not

for purpose but effect, keep it a family

business.

the pen leans weary in shadow,

and day yawns with greater

and greater winds, the boats are crawling back

to their oily dens and the tan white men

with their worked on bodies

to their blond wives, and we are staying quiet

while the rocks build rounded edges with each other,

white clouds are born of nothing and release

themselves,

while the clams shrug into the mud

and bubble with contentedness, while

the language of the ocean whirls stories

of which we can only see the sparkling beginnings –

and the building go up and come down

and some men buy while others drown

and some say on the whole you’ve got to admit

it is getting better, but I say

                       

as long as any man is stuck in too shallow water,

as long any, any person is beaten down like a stake into the sand,

I want to jump into the cold, flashing ocean after him,

I want to tear my clothes and run screaming along the beach.

The sand turns salt, the salt

sand. Water evaporates to come down

again in great torrents of rain.

there is a great sense in this world, one deeper

than perhaps we will ever know,

but there is no sense in a person going hungry.

10 days of awe and then the equinox

we watch the holy beast of fall land

through double panes,

feathers dropping sickly

and storms on the horizon.

each in their room,

folding t-shirts, cutting hair--

Somerville drowses richly, thickly,

grey paved and still hungry after dinner.

when jonah turned his back on Nineveh,

he said he would rather die than change his life.

so God made his choice his world.

In the Museum of Fine Arts, there are urns which tell you

that which you must do.

But it’s historical fact now. How curious

the edges that we have rounded.

I am in Cleveland pouring lagers

in the lava room as the Brown’s win.

I am in Denver holding a hiking pole

to the sun.

I am in Philadelphia painting my lover’s bathroom

blue.

I am in a manic state, dancing naked in the attic.

the world is not holding together

the way it used to

and beneath the house, a yawning pit opens,

the structure begins to crumble.

shall we find something else to do?

we nest, we pray,

this year I ask if we are in the belly of the whale,

or already spat out.

have you learned enough from this darkness?

We throw one hundred stones into the river

after hearing the shofar run out of breath.

the river is yeasty and yellow,

overflowing its banks with a kind of

life giving death.

on the horizon, the great oil tankers loom and

a coal train dings its dingy bell.

I miss the mark, I stray, I make mistakes.

but do I forgive?

what is it the muddy moustache says?
to see what is necessary in things

as what is beautiful.

does the grass forgive the seed?

or the wind for that matter?

or the great plain of which it is only a small part?

I am throwing up my hands these days

and thinking the stars in my bones know

something I will never own.

when the weather turns and everything in us

begins to turn too, longing to relinquish itself,

to fall away fully used as the knowledge of survival settles,

when we see our own hands reaching for an answer, let us not

turn on our phones.

let us not turn to the distracting touch.

is it cuffing season?

even if we lose everything we should not lose,

let us be quite out in the open about it:

there is a mystery here which I will certainly perish on.

this new poetry was made for our blistered mouths.

deep breath now

The tree in our shady front lawn

Sprouts white flowers at its peak,

Roots embedded in coupon catalogues

Swollen with rain and beer cans tossed

Over an unwelcome fence by street drinkers.

I gaze at it, leaning my neck

And arms over the ledge

Where my home meets the city.

Spring changes the tree,

The way night slowly and then suddenly

Changes the day,

The way a place can change a person.

I am leaving Philadelphia

With its magnolia trees crawling their way

Into the air to bear pink and purple petals

Thick with a sense of their own beauty.

I am leaving the children sweating happily

In muggy summer streets, kicking tired leather

In front of cars double parked for the past hour.

Over the tips of the elms planted in clark park

Some hundred years ago I can see the last sun

Highlighting the city, the way a farmer here two hundred years ago

Must have seen the First Bank with its marble tanning a few last minutes

Before settling down for a smoke and bed.

The snow collected the history of death here,

Where thousands couldn’t afford to both keep their heat

And buy breakfast for their kids so, school lunch

Became very important in strawberry mansion.

And the largest city park in the united states loomed

With dead cherry blossoms in the fall when

John coltrane’s old house hulked over an empty lot with

Two grills and a hundred syringes sprayed over the dirt.

And summer, oh the dangerous summer nights, sirens stirring

The humble buzz of mosquitoes, while we all stay out on our porches

Drinking pbr and jim beam until we run out

And refuse to sleep in the hot mess of youth.

But the spring in Philadelphia changes me,

The way it changes the tree in my yard,

The way my lover’s hand stirs the hairs on my chest

Like a bird, like a wind.

Philadelphia is always going away,

Struggling in a straight jacket of poverty,

Scraping its hands on the pavement

As it falls

And still forcing itself up.

Philadelphia is always here,

Old city with its rich gay artists

And apartment complexes going up

Like weeds from some other country covering the forest floor.

Philly, you are smelling like fire and the smoke that comes before,

Like perfume that’s left on sheets, like the paper in old books.

Philly I am leaving you, but I wait for you

To open me like spring, some day soon.

my room

I like to be in a place

Where evidence of me remains—

White walls covered with scribbled sketches,

Memories of summer evenings in the birch forest or clumsily 

beneath the oak table lying on the floor with my brothers—

My scratched watchface ticking quietly on the bed

beside me as I tuck my face into the pillow at night—

Books stacked in isolated piles randomly

like monuments to the wind in bryce canyon

Each one a series of sleepless nights and feelings of precipice

That then ended. Here where spring stubbornly

Refuses to open her sleepy petals,

I am dreaming of the moon in a sandy night sky,

I am wondering where I will be next season,

what evidence will remain behind.

I am breathing cold night air

amidst the sound of sirens.

I am pouring a dram of scotch

and wandering into the desert.

I am closing my eyes and seeing the maples davening

As the storm begins high in the mountains.

snow day in spring

On a morning

When the snow busily

Packs itself away outside my window

And my body starts up lean and straight

As an elm out of the disheveled dirt

And the world outside is bright

And full of something that has always

Been free, how could there be

Rules about what we should or should

Not do on such a day, when all the victorian’s

Raise their chins in pride

And the storm plays all around

Like some fantastically wild child

And the trees along spruce hug their own white shadows?

This is a day to kiss the one I love,

To open up my hands and let her wash them,

To pray and say the world puts some things together.

It is cold and the wind sings pleasantly

And we are here so wonderfully now.

place

In the few hours after work,

We create small rituals

To schematize loss—

I am waiting 12 hours for your plane to land.

What I will say,

I do not know.

 The dirty ice at the end of the block shrinks

And smoke pours into the night

Like a hot metal—

It all goes somewhere.

The cracked concrete underfoot and dead

vines tracing their history

Up our chimney. It took tears

Going down cold into a mess of hair

And me realizing I hadn’t worn a warm

Enough jacket to get me to leave manny’s house--

Big chin and unfed muscle, only small hours of quiet

Before the 4 am shift

In a house full of drunk brothers

Watching bootleg dvds.

I knew he was inside, hiding

and wondering if this would turn out ok.

Me too.  

I went to the church where some 20 jews sang

A wordless melody. They asked me

About work and I made a graceful exit

But not before pulling up my hood, wandering towards

The stained glass and mouthing words of praise,

Rocking my body with the mourners kaddish

The way I learned so long ago, in rhythmic sobs

Not even I understand. I think,

It isn’t quite time to ask

Where this will all go.

Sid is in me laughing, everybody poops

When they die.

It is suddenly march 10^th and the bartenders

Are just getting their paychecks.

My phone rings with numbers I do not know.

Acela

“Charlie bit me.”

                                    “Why is this happening?”

“And it really hurt.”

                                    “Is this going to be forever?”

“And it’s still hurting.”

The woods are grey and thinned

Against a rolling sky that goes on.

The suit across from me hides a skeleton

Under little hair and fat, a few credit cards,

Ill-conceived smile designed to continue

The burial process of nervous questioning life

That last saw light in college when high on mushrooms

And wide eyed he splashed

water into his armpits and laughed

In front of his friends as it dripped down

And soaked his briefs.

Now the train is quiet except for the two Cambodian women

Bickering beside us and one of them opening

A can of seltzer.

Gravel, graffiti, warehouses, piles of disused metal.

Stopped chemical trains. Wood chips and cell-phone towers.

What is there in this world?

This morning I almost could not wake,

The dreams pulled me so down as under waves.

I slip over a blue sweater and fry eggs barefoot,

The cold tiles speaking something of life

I cannot quite make out.

The house snores.

I have never wanted to sleep so much.

There is too much time,

I did not even notice before.

10/20

here in spring the sound is quiet,

sea lions purring in the sun,

paradise ducks winding through the

mist—the mountain asks

“what can you leave behind?”

one after another that took millennia

to grow fade in the dusk and clouds.

This unsettled land with landslides

And temporary waterfalls asks—

“how can you begin again?”

whenever the rockface is

suddenly clean in a blanket of

beech trees, I see myself slipping,

grabbing hold of the wall,

the letting go—

long drop into the water.

I do not know the answers.

I cannot say what makes the water

In me run soft when I think of you

Or how in the silence

Of water passing between

Cloud topped mountains I feel

As if god and you

Are the only words left.

spring nor'easter

By the wind and by candles,

By unexpected snow and branches

Cracking above our heads,

I find the bubble of quietness.

The day of waiting in thin-lit

Halls washes down the windows,

Memories of car tires swishing

Across the road and downed

Power-lines in the part of the city

Some people close their eyes through

Are a rich taste on my tongue

Quarter of a century poured out.

Still the still quiet after

Is very hard, not knowing

What to do with this big yearning

That reaches for the hand of the world,

Swirls my eyes green of the ocean

I feel so distant from. I am missing

Its comforting whisper in this storm.

We are just inside, creaking

Bones and floorboards struggling

To retain heat, looking out

at confused moonlight and wanting

very badly to lose this body

sometimes pleasant and sometimes

hurting wanting wanting

to dissolve like powder

in the great wind, find

my way back to a place

where the trees grow unrestricted

by concrete and water sings

its blessing into all the fruit

of the world—the houses,

the corner boys, the unused steel

and green things,

all my lovers,

and me.

Shining

Spring rises over skin first,

Achingly over fast ice, sun slicking

And lapping up what was thinly buried.

In the woods of Pennsylvania, the trees begin

To sweat with joy, in the places behind their faces,

They begin their slow communal humming

At the rejuvenation, the rebirth of all things.

Some part of me celebrates that all of this bursts

Awake, out of darkness and miraculous,

like a lover in the morning.

And some part of me can’t.

I am thumbing a heavy green stone hung

About my neck as a reminder and I wander

Through brambles and into thick thorns who’s hands

Clutch a Styrofoam cup and empty 40.

What was desperate becomes history.

How are we to know what we lose along the way?

The dead sing through jet fuel as well as

Streamed audio-- I hear them now

In the interminable muttering of the airport.

Last night, the moon was a cook

Slowly removing his clothes when he thinks

He is finally alone. It was so sweet and harsh I could

Not look away. The world is parched tonight,

Drinking rain and light alike, wanting to be filled up.

As the nights go on, I wonder whether

The seasons sing so they might catch us along,

Asking for harmony for us. Give yourself to sadness,

This warmth seems to say. Drink it up

As if it already makes up the vast part of your body.

carrier

In the backyard, I wait

For the clouds to kneel before

The moon. I have stood quietly for hours

Where the workers go to catch their busses

In the rain, fumes spewing past stacks

Across the highway, where the flames arise

Within the web of machinery but do not consume.

So few know where to keep a heart.

Not me. Is it beyond Malcolm X park, after the rusted tin

Of the dome and used needles buried in the grass?

Or where Haverford meets 58^th and the whole

Road system turns on itself drunkenly

While an obese woman does her oldest daughter’s hair

While her son looks on, squinting into the sun?

We whittle our thumbs away

At plastic bags and the scribbled screens

Of cellphones as the night comes,

As the night ends, as we face the day

With red rimmed eyes. Is it there, in the thousand thousands

Racing along to get –

Let me be specific.

This world is broken,

But beautifully so,

With windows in the earth

To all that we are, and all that we could be.

I squat down close to the pavement

Bare feet on bits of mica

Just outside the two windows I spraypainted,

And the light goes out,

I smell gas from the grill and the sweat in my

hair—today was 13 hours of grueling reaching,

Today was untired hoping,

Today was quite alone,

And we should say it over and over—

Certainly today I felt swollen and alive

With all the grass and unwashed uniforms,

With all the granite built into countertops

And bones into necklaces, with all the children

Still awake in their tents of linen,

And foxes licking matted hair,

And buzzing flying things circling their little lives

And all the tired hands of bartenders grazing

Glasses, with all the skin calling to other skin,

And all the hearts beating alone to keep the damn thing going.

Sometimes the waiting is more.

No tears come.

Tonight it is more darkness than moon.

over and

This room hasn’t seen itself in a month,

Mouth open with no curtains staring down

At trash in the street. Caught on the edge of

Two cities, the wind screws its

Face into snow while I work.  Make space

Mimic the soul, make the soul make

The soul. Where do memories go

To collide with whiskey slithering

Down the throat, hushed confessions

Of desire terrible and falling on deaf ears?

I am not the one you’re looking for.

Angel’s harp on the one, the one I am not

In any shape to be getting on here--

When you’re drunk don’t hitch, like a child

Stay still in the store of whirring toys,

Know someone is coming to get you.

But out here, west Philadelphia rows

Going down to the hospital noone knows about,

Past the church with the red doors

And the church with the neon signs

And the house with vacuum cleaner advertisements painted

On its ankles that now is a drug store--

When the city grunts and groans and heaves

And keeps giving birth to kids in braids overflowing

Polka-dot tanktops, and lean bodies surging out of beaters

Crashing over each other and hitting each other with cellphones,

And a loud sax hiccupping over sissing sissing sick sicking

It should be known I am not the one. I’m

Starting to know it too.

february 4th

I found the letter you wrote me

In the smoking wreck of my car

On the side of 95.

There was a light rain

And I was reaching around because 

No one knows what to do

When that happens.

I heard the sound

Before it almost collapsed to a point

And the front tin of the hood

Scrunched up like an accordian

Whose notes can kill you

If they go too long.

It didn’t.

You wrote that you would fight for us.

I didn’t have a proper jacket.

I was 3 hours away in white plains

But still, I wanted to curl in a ball

And feel the breeze on my back,

Let the rough voice of that towtruck

Mumble into nothing.

february 13th

Shaking like the holly in winter,

Spines under snow, red lips

Lingering—there she is

Every morning. Dreaming is

Supposed to be solitary, you say,

Already late to pointless appointments

Where the world has already won.

Show more of yourself. Grit your teeth

While they take the white and dance.

You try to rid

Your body of its power, like the 2am

on your knees shuddering,

But it’s in your blood.

You go out to piss in the backyard

Moon with a shadow over its face

Looking at you peculiar

As if asking

What species of heartbreak is that--

That takes the time away,

That rolls the days down a hill

Into memory without your ever moving?

The city trees bear their bones to the wind

And run out to the violet sky like some

Very slow wild thing skittering through the air.

You wish you believed in the sky,

That last free thing.

Something has drained out;

Now you are like the oak leaf in winter,

All desiccated veins and longing for spring.