Our Upcoming Vacation
You do not love me and yet
I am following you overseas, far far away
I followed you across borders before
400 miles away
I nearly left you
I am going again
I am uneasy, but I will go
I do not fear foreign land
Being alone on a strange island
I’ve been there
I am going but I am uneasy
Not of the place, the natives, the unknown language
But because you do not love me
And I am following you anyway.
For Anton: The Beginning (Unfinished)
I
You were born to me the day we met
first an idea, then a manifestation
out of the rose scented smoke
above a garden like Eden
where mice hung from grapevines.
Hologram Love
I am learning the art of being
in two places at once
giving oneself wholly while
giving nothing at all
like a hologram he sees me
but holograms are real after all
and feelings are felt without touch—
It feels real and I am still me
so this must be the way to be
in love.
Forecast
I trust your affection the way I trust the weatherman’s forecast
He says expect blue skies but rain clouds blight the heavens
After all we are yet another prediction with a chance of precipitation
This predicament that’s soaked me to my bones enough times
That I always carry an umbrella even when the sky is benevolent
The patter from the downpour lulls you to sleep while I toss and turn restless
All too much aware that awake you hug me close but in your slumber you turn your back.
Summer Dreams
I suffer from Summer fever
In the dead of night a red Sun
Creeps into my dreams
Swallows the dark like a fire
Burning a picture of us
You a nameless face
Something from my subconscious, elusive
Like a shadow of someone
You could be from the future or the past
Time doesn’t matter
We move like rays from the Sun
One moment here the next
Like a movie
Drinking mojitos in Morocco
You could be James Bond and I the femme fatale
On a rooftop with a winding tube that spits us out
Into a pool of freezing agua
And I wake up cold—
In the Summer I am colder than ever.
You Are Your Own God
I blame him for haunting me and her for existing, but after all I gave birth to his ghost and I allow her to exist, as she does, in my jealousy. I am, in fact, the god of this world. My own. Vindictive and tormenting.
Home[less]
I have my body but it never suffices. My legs are constantly pulling me somewhere while all my back wants is to lie down. And that thing we call a heart, a soul; the metaphysical, this obsession with “home,” compels me to a kind of space, a shelter with multiple rooms and maybe some pretty furniture from a popular catalog. For what? I have air, and that should be enough. I have the four walls of my skull and those electrodes inside can’t be bought. Is it because I can’t show them off? I am so preoccupied by this idea of a place, a home, and yet I am my own sanctuary. Me. So why do I feel homeless?
My Face
Peeling that scab—
takes me back
the last day, you and I
scrambling like mad
in the rain
moving impossible furniture—
and were you watching me
in the rear view mirror?
I could never control
my face;
those expressions you read
resent…
I could never tell what expression you meant
only that I was around for you to see it
and that was enough
for you to know better.
Never the less,
I look back—
rewinding those scenes
I might be grateful it’s over
instead
I blame my face
for being two-sided.
Words
Opportunity is a funny word,
like love,
a word that can be manipulated,
re-interpreted,
re-defined through time and
wielded from one’s mouth,
like a double edged sword.
Bodies
The worst, when one fails to be at ease with their own body. But our bodies, they change beyond our control. Even now, as I sit here, the minutes past ravage my skin, my skeleton. Wrinkles grow deeper and bones deplete. And after all, I was never given a say in the first place. I didn’t choose my mother’s nose. This mechanism, atoms constantly evolving unbeknownst, was never mine to begin with, will never be at one with my mind, me.
“My Body is a Cage”
I’ve tried time and time again and failed, for I cannot break free from these limbs. My arms and legs, my torso, my chest; an inescapable prison cell. For what is freedom but made-up in our heads.
Life is Good
Your love
leads to
lean muscles
from all
your running
and hearts
missing in
action.
And your friends,
they’re hopeless
romantics with
stories to humor
the humorless.
So you stare
into walls until
the paint begins
to corrode under
your eyes, their
sockets can hold
no more,
deliberating over
brewed coffee and
brewed hope how
life is good.
Written May 5th, 2006
This House
This house
stood on wooden stilts
over Jamaica Bay
over the Atlantic Ocean
over unrelenting waters.
And when the wind blew east
you heard the shingles shake
the walls moan
that whoosh! and crash
of the stock market
in the creaking floorboards.
Then one day the door slammed shut
so hard a tidal wave came
so fierce it tore this house to little bits
of wood and plaster
cruising in the flood.
Written December 16th, 2008
Undone
Effortlessly,
pulling with canines,
swallowing raw flesh,
pulsing tissue,
taste on my tongue;
satisfaction of coming
undone.
Written April 1st, 2006
