authentic desire
wells up from deeper trenches, i think;
when you come around,
i am merely interested, affectionate.
the body sets its own course.
in twenty-three hours
or as many years,
i can demonstrate the passage, the waning
of legitimate love,
the creative campaign of craving
launched by a pulsing heart.
in questioning authenticity i have learned
to press my palms against your chest,
seek a heartbeat,
seek an iron ore in your ego.
these things are real enough,
i should doubt you further?

the necessary purge:
a cleansing in the name of sleep,
an emptying of the heaviest burdens.
you weigh on me,
even when unconscious i can feel you burn:
circled around my shoulders
curled up like a python,
and my shame the heat that warms your bones.
the dreams don't come as often now,
the visions stay away.
is it true or is it false,
that some words must be said?
what's written can't be taken back,
self-righteous statements can't be deleted.
here i'm alone,
keeping vigil in the mirror
in my deep dark home:
tracing the slopes of my body,
cooling the surface of my skin.
your words, my words, my heat, your burn,
all symptoms of hearts that
beat too similarly to let each other be.
you are the gravel under my feet,
the inertia that keeps me stable.

the works of humanity,
the things we can build, unreal,
lost in fantasy—
who can say what is real, what is not?
which place exists, which is imaginary—
why not build the imagined,
it will take eighteen months, we can
quote you the cost.
and all the actions of your life
could take place in this building,
in this imagined space,
the events of your reality could
be a little less real here.
whatever it is that you want,
pick your shapes and colors
and the heights of the walls, there is
an arch with a keystone holding up
the entire image:
why not build what is imagined,
and house your life there?
maybe it would be a little more magical,
or a little more comfortable.

made the mistake of erasing your number,
didn't know who you were
when i picked up.
call it lonely, call it curious,
call it fate—
never thought i'd hear your voice again,
especially not saying my name like that.
what our mouths say is not
what is really happening here:
"why did you call"
is really, are you still thinking about me?
"what are you doing right now"
is really, did you replace me yet?
you've got me thinking now
about all those nights we spent just like this,
clinging to phones and voices
that were too far away,
watching the hours tick by.
i have given you hours of my life,
days and weekends and years
and it all comes down to this night:
weeks after the fight,
this is some kind of return to the emotions
that used to keep me safe.
i am not safe any more,
and i embrace that with open arms
and open bottles and car windows down
on the highway at 4am.
but here's your voice again
on the other end of the line—
i cannot listen, i need to drink.
self-destruction can be so delicate.

in peace, we were what some might envy: in lust,
we were just what we could be. walking slowly
late at night, the body's urges growing—
i leave the dishes dirty, i let the dust
pile itself along the ridges. just once,
i cried. and then i left, against your grain,
and built my dream: a scene without a frame,
the stage unset gives nothing away but dust.
the walking begins, a trial of time and pain
to prove the thing i lost is really gone.
my feet may etch the path they will, since you
aren't here to keep me from it. what i gain
in distance is lost in blood: from veins it's drawn
by guilty needles that shriek their own debut.

something simple, something soft
and seeping in around the edges—
like a bruised peach,
like your red lips biting into the flesh,
like the juices dripping down.
something sneaks in along the periphery
when i look at you,
you might be washing dishes or
brushing back your hair or doing nothing at all
but when i look at you—
something like a sleeping silhouette,
the curves of a woman
smooth and firm and inviting.
there can be such honesty in love,
truth-telling like you've never dared anywhere
but here in this bed.

she is a veritable exorcism of words,
a lacking useless vulgar hole
that coerces all the light into its mouth:
and all silence, all silence once the deed is done.
with eyes like portents she stares
and wins the contests against unblinking stars;
they wince, they wink
at her gaze, longer than their lightyears,
packed with more fire than their innermost hearts.
and that vast, secret silence
against which she heaves her body and
her tongue and her breasts, her mouth and the
noiselessness which pours out of it,
that hideous hiding silence keeps her mysteries
under invisible lock and swallowed key.

somewhere beneath the newscasters’ glow
and outside the shrieking political show
somewhere, someplace that has never been seen
continues rotating in darkness.
somewhere in shadows, bent backs uncurl
pick up brown babies and give them a twirl
here parents scrape just to feed every mouth
and rock them to sleep in the darkness.
and under the broadcasters’ glimmering talk
of Fannie and Freddie and Greenspan and Locke
an idyll unfolds in the hungry young minds
of the wealth and the warmth in the light.

in a world of possibilities—
during the years of our youth and the seasons
of mobility, ability, and honesty—
you made these choices,
you brought these ends around.
in a sky of shapes you saw only clouds,
and i went seeking doorways.
on the list of things you can't control,
add me, and i'll add up
all our many faults and the ways
we connived and coerced and conceived.
but this is a story
that i have told many times before
and without results;
in a sky of shapes you saw only weather
when i was dancing in the rain.
you could apologize to me now,
and i'd laugh for the impossibility of it.

hymn for gilead

the bar, the bar, with all the little
helpness notes strung out
in between the strident lines:
you must, you must, keep moving with them
else lose the narrative,
the string of coherence and strain.
today, today, a little song must sing
what ears won't acknowledge
nor eyes raise to meet:
there is, there is, a balm to be had
for all the ills but there is not
enough to go around.
please sing, please sing, since only sound
can keep the notes running,
can give the words power:
there was, there was, a mountain of truth
but now there is rubble
and the tribes run round seeking lack.