My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

If you were the sky
Then I'd be the sea
And when you shined bright
It would reflect in me.
When you're at rest
Then I am steady.
If you wanna get rough
I'm always ready.
Past closing at the bars
If you show me the stars
I'll open right up
And cast them out far.
And on the darkest night
If you won't shine a light.
Then I'm silent alongside you
Until you feel right.
We'll meet at the horizon
Where lovers will stare
And wonder with passion
Why they can't meet there.
And you'll share me a kiss
As bright as two suns.
When they meet in the middle
I'll know the days done.
And I can tell that's your way of saying to me.
Goodnight my love.
If you were the sky and I were the sea.

Call a                          doctor/ plumber/ priest
My heart is               broken/ leaking/ deceased
My life is                   worthless/ so much better/ over
I'm going to              **** myself/ tell your wife/ Dover
How could you         leave me/ not know/ lie?
I hope you                return my stuff/ come back/ die
I'll never                   forget you/ forgive you/ go away
I need                        closure/ a DNA test/ to tell you I'm gay
Your                           face/ crotch/ top of your back
Is                                so beautiful/ lumpy/ unusually slack
Your                           ex/ mother/ best friend from school
Always made me      great coffee/ feel inadequate/ drool
I will                           miss you/ **** you/ stalk you forever
That way we can      be friends/ get away with it/ be together
I'm sorry                   you did this/ I did this /we failed
I promise to               pay you/ dye it back/ get you bailed
Please don't               leave me/ show the Polaroids/ write or call

(*delete as appropriate, just delete it all.....)

O New found world,
you are so little yet
what will you become?

Will you be great and strong,
or will you be weak and gruesome?

Will you be courageous and bright,
full of young minds ready to learn

Or will you be dastardly and scheming
ready to ****** away everything that you did not earn?

Will you be our friend,
or will you make us an enemy
like we have done
to countless, innumerable innocents?

Is this what you intend?
To confound us with such implements?

Well done
O New found world
I will nevermore
understand a word.

My mind has an edge
Like a blade.
I feel it grinding
Hard, eating away.
My heart is on ice
So cold, no feeling.
Is it possible that I could
Melt away

Euphoric visions
Frantic envisions
Body collisions
Heavy prescriptions
Enlightened by a muse that I was happily given
Unwarranted treasures on the paper was written
Psychadelic notions
Underminded by twitches
Glares of green lights flashing
In the artists’ painted trenches

Heavy prescriptions
Doses of living
Binded by ink from a tie-dye fitting
Zones flowing in and out
Lying down for the feeling
Eyes looking up
At the neon-colored ceiling
Ah, is this living
A euphoric disposition?
Defying immortality by a psychedelic existence
Back under...



To the trenches



And the heavy prescriptions

Do not wonder why I do not
dream.
I do not need to wander the plains of
fantasy.
Wiggling down rabbit holes like
Alice.
Screaming in nightmare or far-flung
horizons.
Never weeping for the loss of
love.
My dignity intact as I never need
laugh.

Never need to live.
Never need to breathe.

Sleep.

My sky is blue
Broken-china-blue
Today

Not as yours or his or anyone’s
Not robin’s egg happy-hue
Or hopeful cornflower-color
Not rolling-ocean-peace
No endless expanse
Over a world full of possibility

But my sky is blue
Crying-eye- blue
Today

I don’t remember
The exact color of the car
That took you away
But in my mind’s eye
It should be this blue
My blue

Because my sky was blue
Teardrop-truth-blue
That day

Such a contrived color,
Overused metaphor:
Sad-blue, dead-blue
Burning-blue-gray like my hate
For all the words
We’ll never share
For desperation
For lost beginnings
Estranged from happy endings
And foregone conclusions
And decisions made
By a woman whose pasty face
Is still burned as

A blue-print in my mind
Of the person I
Never want to become

The woman who
Unknowingly
Painted my world
In red-fury and
Burnt-orange-bitter goodbyes
Thoughtless paintbrush
Strokes making sure

That my sky was blue
Crisp-autumn-cloudless blue
That day

When you and I
Were both too young
For understanding
Just
Children caught up
In the real world
For the first time

Yes, my sky is blue
Snapdragon-fire-blue
Today

When seven years later
I think I’m
Still not old enough
To comprehend

Why my sky is blue
Bittersweet-baby-blue
Today

Because they
Took you away
Because you’ll never
Know my name

Even though I’ll
Remember yours
For the rest of my life

I was standing on the shore,
           waiting
With my toes buried in the sand
                            waiting
Thinking that the tide will take me in
                                             waiting
And my heart would drift on in.
     T  h  e  n    I    m  e  t    y  o  u  .

You came as a wave, tumbling, rushing towards me,
             crash
Hurtling and strengthening 'til you swallowed me whole.
                           crash
You snatched me in, pulling me deeper and deeper,
                                         crash
Until I lost myself in the ecstatic sea.
    A  n  d    t  h  e  n    y  o  u    w  e  r  e    g  o  ­n  e  .

I was stranded, so deep, in the ocean, so still.
              breaking
Your wave had engulfed me and now I was drowning,
                                   breaking
Falling, sinking down into a sea of melancholy.
                                                     ­   breaking
My heart, oh, my soul.  Cracked, torn into pieces.
    I    w  a  s    l  o  s  t    a  t    s  e  a  .