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
A Fantasy
(“It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.” –Donald Winnicott)
It is strange to think, when I ask myself like Tony Hoagland does in “Distant Regard” what I would do if I knew I had a few months left to live, that I’d like to spend my last moments alone. I’d like mostly to feel how enchanted and dignified I am after reading Proust, about Swann’s enchantment with the quiet phrase of a simple sonata, one that binds him to Odette and the maddening reprieve of invisible truths, what is always within and out of reach. What else is like sitting here with Proust and Tony, pondering these fleeting images I have of lying next to you, rather than lying next to you. For some reason my parents are here as well, next to my death bed. It’s not as warm as I want it to be. But I am full somehow, possibly with the air of forgiveness. I prefer nothing else than that which I am thrown into, this place that has become a home of sorts, even with its shade of loneliness, its hours in the dark scrambling to escape only to find myself back inside, yearning for more. I want to be here, which might say something about my relationships, which says something about myself, or only myself and how I relate to others, things I may not like to admit and hence are best left without explanation. Until I feel close and rooted enough with someone like you I will continue to likely want the presence of dead men and poets I don’t know. I will enjoy the daydream of a felt understanding while thinking of you, you walking up behind me with a kiss ready to give as I am squeezed into tears by the beauty of sadness, the tenderness of longing, for the loss of that which has grown familiar. You with your mouth which one day says I know why you are here. It is yours and yours alone, you say. I will be here, waiting, waiting in shadows of my own, watching the candlelight flicker on reflections of your face.
WORK MEETING IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY
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
You got a new car: a 20 25 Tacoma. It’s practical you said:
look at the 6 by 7 truck bed! Sure 23 miles to the gallon
isn’t great but who’s counting? You are I guess when you
laugh and tell me it’s your last car—consider the commute
times the distances you drive now which don’t add up
to be much since work is closer to you than I am
here across the country—I get it, I said, it’s practical
