You’re on your way to pick me up at LAX again, where the traffic is as endless
as California’s highways. I can hear you screaming already
in your grey prius, even with the windows rolled up:
why does he live on the east
coast; can’t he fly
in somewhere closer; who
are all these clowns
in my way
as you weave in
and out of cars,
find your way through
the sun-stained faces
of drivers who should have
their licenses revoked, drive
deeper into the concrete
tangle unable to hear your
Chill Out Instrumental Beats
playlist
until you arrive
at my terminal
in one
piece. Finally
I step into the car
and you drive us
to our usual spot
where the familiar questions
are asked: how
was the flight, how’s
work, how are
you as we look through
the steam of hot tofu soup
“Matter alone can touch or be touched.” (De Rerum Natura)
To the restless atoms constantly in motion:
I have inherited your need for constant connection
and immortality. Your mission is to touch and be
touched, to bond both with like and
unlike, to arrange and recombine in new configurations
of the same. Without you
we wouldn’t have the chance to be
nothing. We’d still be
a something, a lesser thing compared
to other things who have it sorted out (beings),
yet-things seeking to become
the possibility of persisting as more
than an accidental arrival attempting to make itself
an indivisibility.
Before I put the fig in my mouth, you tell me
a wasp has been inside it. What prevents you
from eating it is knowing this, and that
the females have it worst: they die
once their eggs are planted inside
somewhere beyond the syconium, eggs
that were fertilized by their brothers long
before their sisters grew their wings, wings
they are destined to lose on their way
into a fig. Who asked them if they wanted
to be fated to fruit the rest of their lives?
Who warned them the trail of a scent
could change everything?
Circle
It’s you again, glowing in technicolor.
Your face is haloed in a perfect circle.
Behind you are waves, glass rippling.
I want to reach across the distance,
as if to step through a portal to find
you where you are, somewhere
I’ve only read about. I know so little
still. How to hold you without stuttering.
How to send my laughter without
obstruction. The past accompanies me
everyday, renders every message with
a shock to my chest. I fumble again,
and that’s when you step through
with a rock in your grip, as if to say this
is harder. The Greeks merely pondered
the same mountains you are climbing.
You step further and tell me to grab, to bring
with me what I’d rather forget. Hold there
and here, you say, I know the way up.
Song of the crickets
I ask you to describe the scene.
You respond with a moonlit sea
of crickets. A trail ahead of us converging
into a single point beyond the trees.
You have your headlamp with you
but decide the darkness is where
we belong. You’re happy here
as I am following the fading sun.
There are no questions for once.
They come up only after I become
a stranger upon leaving you. I step back
into the subway station, accidently going
The problems are multi-factorial: mislabeled data, unstandardized input streams,
the constant search for certainty in categories: aggressive behavior, generalized
anxiety disorder, risk of harm to self
and property, each with their own modifiers that seem
only to multiply along a spectrum from mild to moderate
to moderately severe to a shape more
unknown than what a name
suggests on top of the urgency
for future funding and the need to be
productive, to prove that something but talking
CHILDREN IN THE PARK
There they are, running around,
biking in tye-dye T-shirts.
It wasn’t always the case
that they were always able
to do this. They were once
only merely
capable. All they could do
was stumble
before the imperative to rise
raised them
up into the air
where they disappeared, became
the wind itself
while riding on
a two-wheeled machine
fast enough to warrant
the worry
of people once
like them,
of the humans who
made them: the machines,
the children, the tye-dye
T-shirts flapping
against the sky.
The allure of distance. Something beyond reach
I can never know. Trains rumbling over
rust outside my window. Engines startled
into going nowhere fast. How long
have I been here, listening? What songs
remain possible to sing? Ant hills
and galaxies are assembled every day.
But the mind is slow to catch up.
It is busy determining itself
in the mirror of its name.
How quickly it forgets even that
when, rushing off into the horizon
Hollow out the rooms. Compress
every detail into boxes locked
in permanent ink: kitchen, bedroom, handle
with care, fragile. It takes awhile. Even after
settling the dust that licked our letters. The sediment
of sentiment that adorned our dreams.
The sigh sagging from your mouth. The key
in the clumsy crook. How hard we tried
to make a dwelling. Something of ourselves
in the brief breath of what we knew
to be our lives. The air remains still
to be breathed. Remember the floorboards
who took you in. How every step managed
to impress them. Those who would not forget.
It’s you and me
standing on the edge
between two subway
cars riding the seven
line hands holding
the rails facing each other
on our way to a Mets
game our faces are pressed
into the afternoon
hair waving watching
the city pass us by
with smiles unsure
what the next
stop is happy not
knowing where the cops
are stationed since
we are committed
to acts of violence
against deadened hearts;
our eyes catch the gaze
of children moving
the opposite direction
we are role models
in our histrionic
display of true affection
now you’re screaming
fair play every strike
every swing I’m in
your line of fire
even the moths don’t know
the difference between
the stadium lights
that frame our smiles and
the rising flame between
a home run and a kiss
what was once a bubble
is now the whole
of the crowd this game
is us swinging keeping
time at bay