inverse correlation

no poetry
painting
or songs
just gentle winds
and long walks
an endless caress
and just like that
no reason for art.
it is better, true,
but it is also quiet.

i killed a huge spider

(it wasn't that large)

its exoskeleton crack-popping

leg by leg

under a bleached paper towel

spider and towel will travel

to landfill,

neither heaven nor hell

(why has nobody told me

that purgatory

is a place on earth?)

painted black

sometimes
i dream that you sing
but only because
i can hear your song
even when don't.

every terrible season

it feels as if i am before you

waiting for the time we meet

enduring summer

sweat

music

drunk boys

next door,

mosquitos.

it feels the same again

i will smile
at my ghost

and you

you will arrive

on the breath of autumn

your laugh rattling the leaves

caught in the branches
where we used to love

acting years

i am a homo
i get yelled at from trucks
and flip my wrists unintentionally
let my voice sing instead of grate
and i have a pastry problem
because croissants remind me
of the game i played in france
guessing if men were gay
or just european
and of my french lover, far away
and of baking in the kitchen
while singing depressing, upbeat songs
because i'm happy, but lonely too.
i am a homo
i get scared of HIV
and i yell at people for getting too scared of HIV
and i hate other gay people for being
more sapiens than homo
because i am a homo
and i never was a good actor.
i wanted that so, so bad
bad, not badly
it was all bad, my acting years
wanting my spot at the table
trying not to cross my legs
in reality i just want to plate the food
tend the garden that made it
combine pretty colors and lovely spices
and go to bed with another homo
who yells, "damn straight!"
at the car that calls us gay.
i'm just a white homo
spending tears on a crisis
that ravaged bodies
and sometimes souls
while others stood back with disgust;
didn't matter if i was homo, queer, gay,
fag, faggot, confused
my blood is still a horror movie
and my grandparents still
are holocaust jews
and we're forgetting
that assimilation is survival
italians, homos, yids
and that somebody will be next
maybe you
and you will forget
how you raged at our pain
and then at our power
you will look back on your acting years
to see that they paid off
and nobody cares
about the cost
not even you.
give it some time.

saline

dying truck
full of love
while a dimple
that is actually a scar
sits in memory
that car is dead
its love less so
and mine
is senile
scraps of heart
carrying us feebly away

summer descends

cloudless day
sweaty morning
i find myself
a tangle of sheets
begging for
a human;
i dreamt it was you

four-legged

i was once
a cat on a lap
lover
your hand on my
head, ears squashed
flat. and my
purr
like dry leaves
falling
stripped us naked
my fur
like soft grass
growing
kept us warm
and you,
my deciduous love
like a tall tree growing
held me high
a cat caught in a branch
sadly knowing
he must
land
on his feet

paul and elizabeth's

well here
is where we used to get fish chowder
mother, father, sister, i
on journeys to a place
whose name
is taken from me by age
your fork, mine
inching for the same bite
of food
it doesn't taste the same
but nothing ever does

weary

last night
one wink
across a table
you were wearing
the same shirt
as in that picture,
fingers lightly
on the nape of my neck
maybe we kissed
i awoke
this morning
no memory

remembering memory

i can feel the words "broken lightbulb"
autumn, leaves, loud cars, trees
the patch of grass where i sat
waiting for the pain of your absence
to leave me alone
so that i could eat dinner with friends
and not collapse
your strength, my beauty
specific rivers, and specific smells
you have taken entire elements
and turned them into you
falling, leaving, learning
that without plans
we will never make them
and you, to me, will always be
broken lightbulbs, autumn leaves
loud cars, and aging trees

red fire farm

you and i
are particle physics
discovered in the dreams
of incandescent humans
silver light dripping
behind their pupils
incomprehensible
overwhelming;
it would take eons
to teach us
in all of our complexity
no paperbound textbook
dusty and memory-sweet
could ever hold our words;
you and i are more obscure
than one thousand dimensions
more difficult to detect
than a distant earth
we are
a theory
innate, obvious, elegant
and in one day, replaced
by the next genius
with a silver light

tabitha

we were once less cautious
and i let you plant a seed in me
expecting something sweet
something that smelled
of honeysuckle, lilac, and eucalyptus
but spring is here, and you are gone
and i am too selfish to kill our child,
her name too sad to tell.
i don't write you letters and you
never send child support and she
just grows and grows.
my daughter and i
witness you from afar
praying that you never breathe again
we laugh when windows shatter.
i am more cautious now
in love with birth control
praying that one day
winter will take our child away
erase her in white, white gusts

and one for wonder woman

you were the wisest
and if you look at my responses
to the poems you put on your blog
in 2009
you will see that i was dumb back then
and have become a human
looking for other humans
having found them all in closets
trying on clothes that are pretty
but don't make them feel so

amory

petrichor morning
hope rising from the earth
in fresh spring clouds
while men spray
insecticide
to kill the things that bite
half of me
caught by all of you
the other half in bed all day
smelling the morning's rain
only vaguely aware
of atomized poison
in the next room
making love to the dawn of spring

in the mail

i cannot send you
my sunny day words
because every day
for you is sunny
and i am a jealous cat
perched on spring's ledge
taking swipes
at each passing day
as if it were a ball of yarn
(or more accurately, a mouse).

three dots

if i said

and you said

both of us love

other humans

i would wonder

and you would wonder

if both of us still love

each other

and i would wonder

if you were wondering

whether or not

i was happy loving

anyone aside from you.

spring, freezing

bringing in the last of the boxes
i moved with, ten months ago
nearly slipping on march ice
that threatens to make love to april
i uncover a few bottles of shampoo
that i bought on a shopping trip to a health food store
with my echoing wound of an ex-lover
in his dying GMC jimmy
one year back.
shampoo,
and an extra ratchet strap, still packaged
from a day when i searched forever
looking for a lost rope
to tie up a boat
that threatened to keep me and
my newest wound locked in harmony
for at least a few more hours.
eventually we bought a new one
and found the original exactly where we thought it had been
so i kept our purchase
and he took the old one all the way to california
where he unpacked his boxes quickly,
learned to say the word "home,"
scarred over more quickly than i,
and forgot about the march ice
that stubborn frost
that teaches who to make love to,
and how

mud season

my first home had a purple door

i left it first

but my parents 

left it more;

new shingles

painted trim

banished ghosts, nobody

will ever know 

how my sister flooded

the entire second floor

how my father severed

his hand 

pushing on a pane of glass

on my purple door

walking into mud season
(the wood was swollen)

and i am sitting here

behind a lover's purple door

the house is gone, and 

it is mud season

everything is melting

wood is unswelling

and the new owners

of my first house

will never know
the history of our love

things are no longer swollen

but they are warped

500 and 600

250 and 300
don't love me anymore
and neither do the birds or the bats
my guitar is a seagull so that, too,
stopped loving me by falling out of tune
the north pole doesn't want me
or i've smashed it to bits and moved on
run to the south pole with
a penguin sweater
that the spirits don't recognize
or compliment me for
i make love to 250 and 300
so diligently
swallow like a good boy does
but they laugh and leave me empty
wondering if all i need is a vaster love

not knowing

not knowing you
only the comfort of your hands
and its coincidence with the easing
of this abominable winter
there is really nothing to do
but pretend that i am the praying type
and offer that in place of
the things that godless folk give
when they are feeling empty;
when they need desperately
for someone else
to be full.

failure

winter is one long month
that eats all of the vegetables
gets healthier and healthier
while the deer
and stray rabbits
pretend to enjoy winter sports
and secretly starve
for lack of margherita pizzas
with spinach and mushroom
house salads with
blue cheese dressing
omelettes, quiches
carrot cakes;
all of us, the little mice and
big big moose feeling our hearts
slow down slowly
barely perceptibly
until we wonder if we are the
hibernating type or if we are just dying
from the outside in, like glaciers
we go on wondering this
dreaming of precious nibbles
until the last surviving critter
wakes up suddenly
to find that winter is gone
it has died of gluttony

bluejay

the melt of spring
brings to mind
a reverse-journey
our autumn tumble
all of our love
pouring down the riverbanks
ocean-towards, deep blue
escaping our mouths
being sucked up by flowers
cleft and swallowed and
turned into meristem
pollinated by a bird
that will ever only know half of me
if you thought the poetry would end in spring,
you were wrong

zosia

of the five or six people
at her wedding
three or four knew her well
two or three still send her
text messages that say,
"hello, i miss you"
one or two are graced
with a reply:
"it has been a long time
i am in colorado with my husband
who no longer has a gold tooth
and we are remembering
the cosmos and each other"
or perhaps:
"i miss you, too."
a thought drifts by, eventually
that maybe she has forgotten your name
or replaced your face with
one of those faces that has hurt you
that to remember you
would feel like a broken allegiance,
to forget you would feel
like the setting of the sun;
replaceable beauty, working
day in and day out
to remind her of the cosmos
and you have been one, two, three, four
and five or six times a fool

slow clap for disaster

the sound of applause
is the sound of you walking away
echoing taunts on a clear blue day
keeping me in bed for too long
making it hard for me to eat
the sounds of applause
is just another way
to know that i have made
you laugh, simply
by being honest

big sur

driving into big sur
i felt as though i might
fall off of the earth
and marry the ocean
large enough to receive
my love, strong enough
to drown me in its own
but i left you
in california,
guarding the coast
like the bird on my ribs guards my heart
and departed
for a windier place
and less constant lovers.

charybdis

there is a three year old on the slopes today
practically round and unable to ski
frustrated teacher motivated only
by his incessant cuteness
tumbling towards an end
at greater and greater speeds
tongue out, smiling, yelling, squealing
past me, and ever-downward.

the thing about kids is that they bounce
when they fall, they almost cannot break
so i am looking at the fall line
imagining round child rolling
off of mountain, into air
flying, gliding with the wind
shrieking, giggling, taunting me
and my obsession with gravity;

if i stand up now i will slide downwards
end up at the same place
the same disasters waiting for me
at the foot of the hill
leading me to the center
of my intimate maelstrom
my wasted smiles
i am hurtling downhill so fast
and all of my failures are so excited to greet me
when at last i reach rock bottom

four

i am collecting boys
like water in a bucket
dousing my garden in acid rain
because what falls from the sky
is no longer right for drinking;
i am praying to a god that does not exist
for soft eyes and a wine-soaked smile
a remembrance of another time
when we drank straight from the spring out back
because it was all we had
and we didn't know any better.
i am asking forgiveness
for my brilliant displacement
the way i've scattered my soul
in so many directions
that only clouds can bring it back
drenching me again in the
raiment of sorrow, polluted
not by oil or smoke or heavy metals;
just kindness, distant and unfair
a remembrance of another time
when we drank from the spring out back
because it was all we had
and nothing could possibly have been better.

the ocean, again

watching my future melt (again)
this time a whisper, a breeze
on days like this i could kiss the cold
let it freeze me in place
a statuette, dreaming of lost love
miracle passions
warmer days and green forests;
but i am an ocean creature
and snow melts where i walk
my footsteps slushing through
the street like little tides
home and back again, day in
and out. i am used to the melting
and after all, water never really goes
away

in your bed

this is the wine
of familiarity
wiping summer from my eyes
dry-mouthed mornings
touching hearts
small kisses like
grains of sand in our shoes.
we are so subtly aged, so young
i can taste the sweetness
in our grasps
so easy to age
that it almost tastes of love

snowfall

sleeping through the winter
wearing only the love you gave me
less than zero degrees and covered in emptiness
five inches, ten inches, twenty
slumbering (or drowning) beneath the
weight of you being far away
the listlessness of the heart
and its inability to travel
long distances without risk of
a drop in pressure, a sudden storm
laughing and not hearing it
muffled by a carpet that kills my toes
burns my hands, asks
me to get up, get up, get up.
and if i don't want to, what then
will i keep on sleeping
waiting for the winter to pass
only to wake up and find you
still gone, gone again?

new friends

i stopped talking, and you didn't start
so i have learned caution
when it comes to matters of the heart.

that weekend

when i say i am disappointed
it is the thought
of you in him
because you are in me
and sometimes in the shower
i rehearse our separation
and the thought passes through me
that i should wish the same for you
that you wished for me,
that the boys who touch you
are at least as good as
you deserve.
i understand now,
i think, that this is only half generosity,
and half self-preservation

leaving

i am falling again
leaving
asleep on a bed of winter
my dreams
returning, joyful and sad
to the days before you
when a season was just a season
and i was a lonesome cat

continent

you surround me
the weight of the entire ocean
maine lobsters
oil spills
the long island sound, and
i try to swim,
instead filling up with you.
i want to be drunk again
and cute, and yours;
i want to sink,
and feel your weight once more.

tell me

monday is silent
and i cannot write anything
beautiful anymore
autumn stole my love
and winter buried him deep

home

kuma is a big dog
and she wants to catch my tears
as well as she can catch squirrels
she brings the rain inside
and tries with love to drown my drowning
but
i can't sleep

or wake up

when it isn't next to you

a warehouse in the presidio trust

you, my lover who is just my lover
in a land where the leaves don't turn
where a minute is seven years long
and then over, done;
do you remember when words flowed
like wine, and wine flowed
like water, in a land with no droughts?
how easy things were
with our ropes so tangled
escaping into each other, licking
our wounds
deciding that strong hands
and fragile necks, and firewood
could pull us through, do you remember--
us, lovers
in a land where point of everything
was to end?