my eyes are heavy

I can't tell you why but
I miss you

there's something wrong
here, your time has
long passed

but even now I think
of taking off your gown

I feel the lace in between
my fingers
my hands against still
impossibly smooth skin
legs that never touched
the ground, legs I hoped
would lead me to forever

your curls rolling down
your shoulders, dangling
between us, connecting
our faces, the fragrance
of beauty itself clasped
between every strand
cascading from your silhouette

tenderness raining
love willing
fear subsiding
you envelope me

in this near-dream state
with the morning sun
pouring in through the
window, my soul is
still wrapped up beyond
with that transcendence
a lovely mistress

I feel you closer than I
ever have before
even when you were
close literally so

what intense longing

what a strange morning
it's been already

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

the women of the past keep
phoning.
there was another yesterday
arrived from out of
state.
she wanted to see
me.
I told her
"no."

I don't want to see
them,
I won't see them.
it would be
awkward
gruesome and
useless.

I know some people who can
watch the same movie
more than
once.

not me.
once I know the
plot
once I know the
ending
whether it's happy or
unhappy or
just plain
dumb,
then

for me
that movie is
finished
forever
and that's why
I refuse
to let
any of my
old movies play
over and over again
for
years.

your arms wrapped around
his neck
i want your tender hands
at my throat

these things cause
gravity to befall me
while you, falling,
float and float

my stomach drops
differently today
not to be confused
with the way i drowned
sorrow these past days

that's a rumble all its
own, a problem I'll
address when the only
one that matters
right now is subdued

my stomach hurts
differently today
i don't feel spurned
i don't feel good
& i'm trying to learn
what it is exactly
you're teaching me

the experience does
nothing for me
but leave me empty
hollowed, vulnerable
what is it exactly
you're teaching me?

i know only of the way
that my stomach,
drowned in the sorrows of
past days, drops
a little
differently today
it hurts a little
differently today

The moon shines a cool blue tonight
as we entwine our fingers, laying on the baseball field
beneath diamond heavens. We lie
in silence, in the moments when the Universe reveals
itself, and contemplate the distances between one celestial body to
another, the space between
us growing as I turn south
to find Orion while you seek Cassiopeia in the north.

Shooting stars cross the sky, and we wish separately on dead
stars and dead dreams, lights already grown red and extinguished
as we whisper in the dark, passing
between phases.

And in the end we're all left searching.

but see, there is strength in being gentle. when you are humble and patient and filled with love, the world gives back to you. i know there are those who would use my kindness as an excuse to be cruel. i know that there are situations where teeth and fists and fire are the only solutions. but so much in this world opens up when you take a moment to ask even the grass what it feels like to be in such a large family. i will take those who walk on me. there are hundreds of others who grow alongside me. there is much to learn from the shy softness that those who are all bitterness will never get to see.