after congress adjourns on december first

this is just to say
that i have given up on utopia
far too late, i know
they held a midnight party
and i wasn't invited

you shouldn't forgive me.

of course we will be sharing bread
from bread lines
living in cramped spaces
sharing bed-bugs, too
working death hours together
of course we will keep each other warm
if it comes to that
but you shouldn't forgive me.

good white people
are the vanguard of cruelty

everything is inverted
it always has been
and when i thought i was striving
i was climbing lower and lower

now i know why they write poetry about you

i will try to do this like you
stuffed mouth of oatmeal, homemade sourdough
same teeth brushed in the same way
with the same paste
at the same time
isolation
i will try to do this like you
turn down the volume on shoulder-devil
just repeat: i am fine
i am fine
i am fine
i will try to do this like you
and it will come out sideways
and my limbs will fall off
and my sex will dry up
and my mouth will smell
and at night, next to the air conditioner
i will remember talking at you like the shoulder-devil
will fall asleep drowning, wake up mouth full
of the usual suspects
oatmeal, sourdough, toothpaste, isolation

augury

this means trouble, this day
this means death
and there is nothing to poeticize about it
except that the burden in my heart
is to wish it away
to care for the earth as a motherbird

cannot, nobody can

and this is the work: to keep on working
even in this sickness of knowing
that nothing is enough, not even close

waking up
feels like dying

remind me why we did this again?

sixteen hours

without you
the puddles never dry
they don't even try to evaporate
it doesn't matter, they think
everything is wrong and heavy
what sense is there in running back to the sea

refraction

now that our love is contained
i must uncover a photograph
in which the light
nearly overtakes you
and your eyes
look like i am drowning
no matter how shallowly
you love me.
now that our love is contained
i am forced to confess
that it is true;
under the tides of our love
i would have either
drowned
or swam ashore

yoked

today, hiking at land's end
i wondered where your feet have fallen on these paths
or if in our years of separation
me on one ocean, you on the other
you ever actually set foot in this park
(i have, after all, neglected much of the beauty
in the places where i've lived)

and suddenly i felt what i've stubbornly refused to know
that it doesn't matter
that the cosmos have yoked me to you
not in a spiritual sense
or even a scientific one
but in the sense that we have traveled enough of the same ground already
to change our lives in obvious and subtle ways
that our small differences
our one degree angles
have hurled us as far apart as america will let us go

how strange is it
that even our distance
even our successful un-knowing of each other
loops us back together
like chattel, perhaps, or simply like lovers

and today, when i reached the point where you can see the golden gate bridge
i remembered that you are moving to london
and i watched the pacific waves crashing against the rocks
and i felt you tugging at me
and i kept on walking.