From "Long Night"

So much had been lost. Memories, feelings, desires were packed away, buried down in the closed compartments inside him. Like the cities to the east, buried in ash with nothing left that was soft or pink or human. Just this, survival and the vague perplexity at his own existence. He didn't know what he wanted, but suddenly her eyes were before him, gleaming white, she was all smooth fire sparking against the night. He wanted to take her and fill her with everything he had, to say every word he knew and every word that had ever been, but she already had them all. Albatross, alacrity, temerity tuxedo murky volunteer the the a it she. Her. It was all inside her already and it would never be destroyed. He kissed her. "Shit" she said. Grammar, indigo, hurricane, her. He started to kiss her again, but stopped, tried to apologize.
"It's terribly cliche," she said, so close to him now.
"There aren't any other cliches left on Earth" he replied, and her peal of laughter fell like shining beads onto dark pavement. They rolled into him, lodged inside him and he pressed his face to hers and tried to remember everything.

Upon Waking, July 21, 2006

Sick and fevered
I dreamt of you
sitting at a cafeteria table,
two books in one hand.
It is how I know you best.
As I sat down with my tray
you began to argue, good-natured stubbornness.
The dream ended.
I lay still for a moment
recollecting reality
and wondered
what you had been doing
as
I
woke.

Teacher's Beau

Perhaps a century ago
we could not be seen together:
young man and schoolteacher.
Decorum reigns in your proper carriage, but
the sight of us would have scandalized young eyes.

This afternoon you surprise me, waiting at the door.
I fly to you,
open my mouth to laugh,
wave at my students
as you escort me home.

Eagan, we own the streets

It is so good to get drunk with you,
to roam the town
and laugh without stopping.

(title currently forgotten)

In the slow slope of a winter day
my heart rises, unbidden,
and trembles, a snowflake,
at the corner of my mouth.
I will not let it drop

into a moment suddenly suspended,
a white moth fluttering in the space between words
awaiting return.
Instead, when you look away distracted
I lean over and smooth your rumpled collar.

bitter haikus 2

Once, comfort between
our collarbones, hearts yielding
soft pounding pillows.

Sheltered in my arms,
called home my mind and marrow,
now you are cast out.

My best poems were
written for, wasted on you.
I don't want you back.

105 E. 4th

How often have I pounded down those steps:
half a hundred times a month?

Striding across the porch where we ate burgers,
beneath the slanted roof where we lay and watched a lightning storm.
One-two hips swing, three-four knees fling, carrying me
into the clear darkness,
Careening to a waiting car,
chasing jubilant into cold downpours,
drifting down the evenings when the starlings chatter
and sunset burns the leaves yellow.

Leaving
fucked up at five a.m. (dizzy with smoke)
vodka drunk at two or three.
Pissed, glad, walking tired,
barefoot, booted, swaying back together or
alone,
always alone on Mondays,
turned away from your screen door,
threading these sidewalks home
beneath a full moon, half moon, stark starry sky.

How often I have clattered down those four rickety stairs
and out across town:
one thousand steps from my doorway to yours.

bitter haikus!

I haven't seen you
in so long I forgot why
I loved you at all.


His hands stroked my hips,
nerves sang, my body betrayed
me, just like you did.


You never made me
feel beautiful, not once or
twice in all that time.

Place

The moon dangling from the curtain rod
is the same moon that was shining above the clock tower,
criss-crossed by cable-car wires,
a silent catechism in that coastal city.

Since then I have seen Orion's star feet
skimmed by an airplane's wing.
He stood for a second on the fleeting stage
and passed into the west.

Here the bright bulb is filtered all by falling leaves,
pine needles, storm windows.
It is not the same.
It rolls against the corner of my eye
like a marble on a slanted floor.

Self-Sufficiency

Open jars, go to bars,
apply, interview, qualify,
pay rent, vote, laugh,
open doors, vacuum floors,
wash windows, carry groceries,
fix a car, open jars...

Sometimes at night
I tuck
a strand of hair behind my ear
and wish
someone would do it for me.