serrate

all of the writers are gone
blown to smithereens, or tied up in
bed. they left us notes
told us not to come looking
they would be hidden
in soft caresses and silken blindfolds
the handcuffs with easy-releases
they would be tied to beds
and wake up with soft fingers on their clavicles.

so the last words ever written
amounted to
"don't call me;
i'll call you."
and the poetry under our eyelids
disappeared into aqueous humor.

north country, almost alone

dropping like flies has no meaning here

when the creatures bump and buzz, nestle

into hair, eyes, ears

careless and kamikaze

like me on the bad days

this thing you have will exhaust you before you can tame it.

i am well aware of the risks

of trying to change what is already functional

and of the great taupe rush of a dim sunset

and of the milky way, so rarely seen downstate

i am aware that if i try too hard

the kamikaze haze will

settle in, like spirochetes

like silt

in this big, lovely house

the piles of guitars play themselves

the books are read

the food eaten

i am treading newly on what has always been.

bartleby

the dusty pearl of long-gone things,
the engineered closeness of
sisters and their long-gone brothers
mothers and their deteriorating husbands
the activation of your voice sets me apart
from dirty rags and a twenty-year-old room
finally being made to look clean.
you are in north carolina now
living on a lake.
i ask you what you write these days; non-fiction
more or less
and how you are writing it
and how you are doing

(how are you doing?)

there are many people to miss, and they all
show up on pieces of digital paper
strewn about my room like bulkless
leaves, leaving, left.

swinger

i took a series of photos of myself
called them "drops" after
the water on my hair, in my skin
feel myself breathing with you, fickle friend
unobserving lover, dispossessed, un-obsessed
the one who needs me and then doesn't, doesn't, doesn't.
i do miss your voice, and the palms of your hands.
trying not to say "i" these days
trying and instead becoming unintelligible
nothing incurable with a day or two, i'm sure.

the great lonesome

what it is to be something
when someone is somewhere
the vaguest of understandings

i stumble upon you
after releasing
wondering
"what makes me so alone here
and too full over there?"

generosity

you said that
and i've been that
and i will be it again
whether or not you are there
or care to be so

last

me too. in other ways.

the way i stay naked, and you do not.
the other things that are suggestive
of happy endings, and not in the traditional sense.

we remind ourself continually: this is not about me.
that, too, in the twisted way. the ways that we forge
to resolve cognitive dissonance. to modulate.

you and your aesthetics, me and my words.