I think your face is beautiful, the way it is
close to my face, and I think you are the real
October with your transparence and the stone
of your words as they pass, as I do not hear them.
-- Bill Berkson, October
October again
and again it's full
of you. Can you feel
this small sadness
as it climbs inside
and undresses you.
How an orchestra
of hands can promise
to be noteless.
Outside everything
is beautiful and dying.
Can you feel this yawning
mouth that only wants
and wants. The intimacy
of small talk without
the immutability of its
damage. Is it possible
to fall back asleep
in your contours
without subverting your
heart into a hallway.
I know I didn't get it right
the first time.
Can you feel that. Inside me
something insatiable
comes to life.
It reaches up my throat
with its claws. Wants
to be petted and fed
cold milk. Wants to show up
on your doorstep. But aren't I
an expert on restraint. Again
and again. I practice small refusals.
I do not touch. I throw out
the milk. I try to unremember
the sound of you laughing.
The way your face looked sad
but honest in some moonlight.
The way time continues to elapse
patiently. A heart that beats
slowly and sadly
still beats. Still ventures
to unremember. What
could you have stored up
to tell me anyway.
After all this time.
What would you
say to me
if you
were not
afraid.
Tag Archives for love
There is no suffering if you do not want anything.
Please forget me. I won't forget you.
You were right about poets.
How right you were. Poets are liars
and obsessive.
Always trying to excoriate reality
into something aesthetic
and effortless
and love into something
digestible at all.
You were right. They shouldn't do that.
It isn't possible
and they shouldn't carry on
like it is. It is true
that I went too far.
Something simple about boundaries
and delicacy or discretion
had begun to elude me.
You may continue to blame me and
I can live with that but—
according to a very famous play
(which I'm sure you've heard of)
Blanche explains that the opposite of desire
is death (death!)
Asked Mitch: So do you wonder?
I don't wonder, or really
we didn't have to wonder, did we?
It was the easiest thing in the world to do
but very distressing and painful
to have done.
I mean, physically painful.
Like a stomachache.
Like sleeplessness.
Sometimes desire
is it's own death
and has no opposite.
No one ever battered me
quite like you.
Early on you told me
about a set of mathematical proofs
which show that two curves
with infinite length
can have a finite area
between them.
Koch's snowflake.
Gabriel's wedding cake.
But the converse is never true.
I don't know why
you told me these things,
but I did want to understand them.
Poets are always trying
to manufacture metaphors
even from mathematics.
I did try
to understand you.
I shouldn't have told you
that I wanted to know you
and I shouldn't have wanted
to know you. This is another character flaw
among writers. The general inability
to let things go
unsaid or unknown.
I still don't know
what happened between us
or what any of it meant, although
I am starting to feel
okay about that. As every day
it became harder and harder
to measure
any finite space between us.
To even understand what counts
as a thing.
One can claim
they don't acknowledge
unspoken subtleties, but
isn't unspoken subtlety
the only way anyone can distinguish
something viable and breathing
from all the pointless sediment
floating along with the rest of the river?
I'm not making that up. I think
people discovered this
all the way back
in the sixteenth century.
With letters and glances
and common sense.
I'm sorry for falling in love with you.
(Really, I am.) Even the idea of you
is revolting and obscene
like eating food off the floor.
I'm not suggesting
this could have ended
any better. In general,
I'm okay. In general,
I think solitude
is a good thing. It's just that
your message was perplexing
and took a long time to sink in.
Because you spoke in opposites.
So yes. Your moody distractedness
began to unattract me. The way
certain words can create a story
but aren't the story itself.
Eventually everything you said
ceased making any sense at all.
(At all). So I stopped trying
to understand anything.
I think the problem is that this
went down really deep.
Well, for me it did
at least.
Deeper than I wanted.
(But then you snap out of it.
Then you realize that the well is deep
but empty.
So you throw in a cigarette.
And the whole operation
bursts into flame.)
Do you see what I'm saying?
I'm sorry that I fell in love with you.
That was where everything collapsed.
I started to sense
that you didn't really want to know me
anymore or know anything at all.
You just wanted to wander around
and pontificate and sulk
as if things couldn't be knowable
(only you called it brooding).
Well. At least I know a few things
about you now. Who you really are.
It stung but I couldn't unknow.
I said I wouldn't write you anymore,
and I didn't. And that I didn't love you anymore.
And I didn't.
I had thought it was a pretext
until I looked you in the face
and said it out loud.
Then I knew it was true.
You know, sometimes
words can do that, actually.
I've realized. Poetry can do that
to a story
between two people.
Make it into something, I mean.
And then into nothing.
Oh, I Remember You
You've snuck around here before,
dangling inside the word forget like a tiny bell
on a leash.
Swaying inside our darkness
you noiseless bat.
Begging me to neglect you.
Oh, I remember
you said it will be okay, like you could know
and like I asked you and like it would be.
Well. The heart is like a mirror,
it can only be broken once.
I'm not mad.
If love was meant to be bloodless
then why would we have
knuckles to grind
and lips to chew on?
I never asked you to go easy on me.
Really. Show me true anguish, yours,
and I will show you mine.
Winks.
So we glue the mirror back together
and it still reflects, but so distorted.
Anyone can love a demented thing
if it is done just right.
If it is just done right.
I can't help the way I am.
If only you
had a sickly half-heart like mine, you would understand.
This is my weak attempt at telling the truth--
I usually just watch you stumble around
and feel your way through the dim corridor.
Are you starting to understand?
My heart is like a mirror,
it will show you who you really are.
I have always chosen a severe life
even when I said I wouldn't.
I was resolute. I was brave. But I still never figured it out:
how to behave, how to be tender,
how to be selfless, how to start over.
I opened the book on my lap,
but only sat there crying. It is hard
to be your own terrorist.
Really who doesn't want to be remembered
as better than we are?
Every day I have allowed you
to overemphasize my gentleness.
This is when I have been most selfish.
Who can blame me? You said hello so nicely
that I didn't sense any interpersonal boundaries.
For once, I did not have to be gracious.
I did not have to starve myself for days
or defy my impulses.
No, for once I let the desperate animal
in my bones devour what it craved most.
Yes, I remember
you.
give me a different life
i always think about this French chef
who committed suicide
a long time ago
i'm sure you heard about it,
he was so troubled with everything
i don't want to be like him
i have nothing to lose
and that's something i never forget
hey
i'm starving
let's go get some breakfast
and some coffee, okay?
we're in the weeds, okay? in the weeds
we love to be in the weeds
you know, a lot of artists were here
triggering something inside of you,
the memories inside of you
memory
is very important
you have to look at yourself and be hard on yourself
every fig will bleed milk if it is not ripe
memory is very important
see
looked at my life and said
"i am not happy"
it was too beautiful,
in a way,
not in a literal way
you had all the sensation of life
sweetness bitterness darkness
a simple recipe
who doesn't want to work
with someone like that?
give me a different life
we would hide here
my little bedroom
i thought that was amazing
i cried that day, for sure
i know i am doing the right thing
you need to be hard on yourself
reflect on what matters,
what doesn't matter
what i remember
the only thing he told me:
I do love you.
for how long?
Until the end of my life.
Sadthing
I held my breath as you carved a line down my thorax, sliced clean through my chest plate. I needed help & you saw it right away. You in your white lab coat, absentmindedly chatting about how you love the southwest, the empty, the canyon. You cracked me open & began removing all the junk stored inside: my insomniac nightmares, my darkdecade lullabies, some extra wishbones & molars. You stood over me a long time, inspecting carefully; my skin splayed open like a messy star exploding. You apologized to me sadly, as if my body was our bedroom & you'd left your wet towels on the floor. Listen you said we are going to have to take everything out. It's going to hurt, but that's temporary. You looked sad. Things just don't look right and your insides need air. We'll put it back after, but your insides need air. I was sad, too, about that pretty face. What a shame to gut it all & the changes to be made seemed slight but costly. I said I understand so you bent into my redcloud and began the process, wincing as you pulled my pieces out one-by-one & you talked about love. But you didn't mean it. I mean, that much blood can make you say stuff. You sung softly to me about happiness but with a blackvamp voice that meant sadthing. Of course, singsong is still more comforting than silence for obvious reasons. Then you put everything back inside me neatly, sighing loudly & those sad eyes. Much better now, you're going to be okay. And you left me there, sleeping, curled up on the table like a heart.
Your Egg
You and I are lonely birds. The last two laborers.
Maybe we don’t always know who we are.
Even our shadows melted together;
we made up every polished stone
in this mosaic.
At first I didn't know how to live
outside of the world we carved out:
that astonishing garden of nowhere,
those deep lakes inside a mother,
the train track down your spine, the wet canvas landscapes
we used to wander together.
How do I keep from returning
to the ghostly oleanders in our arboretum?
They are bending back and forth, promising to open
to me.
What would it take
to grow a garden in me?
There are days I feel that empty canyon
inside me, pulsing
like a lighthouse
and I miss the years
before my childhood.
When I was still a pinhead egg,
buried in your side
and we never were apart.
Then after that. Every morning
was chamomile and maple syrup,
the color of your hair
in the winter sunlight. Your careful voice
like notes from an old record
that float across a dusty room.
You never did wash out of my clothes.
Those things that happened,
I had meant to move through them by now.
But such a cold river of grief ran over me
that I couldn't remember who I was.
It was your voice
that told me: this is who you are
and pointed at my grief.
I Had a Dream About You
We were standing in the church parking lot Figs were falling from the sky, splatting on the asphalt, and you were heaving with laughter, I had never seen you so swollen with joy, your head thrown back, baring your throat to the weak winter sun as the sound burst from you like a geyser We both were wearing mittens You were gazing at me in a way that I wanted to bottle up and keep forever in a mason jar and for a second I thought, this is it So I took out all my ribs and tried to hand them over but you wouldn't take them, you couldn't make up your mind about me and it was too late by then to put them back I laid them on the ground-- a streak of white bone floating in an ocean of figs I looked up and you were gone I looked down and I was knee deep in a clear blue pond There were oranges and water lilies and human ribs drifting on the water I woke up from the dream and you were still making up your mind about me
