Strange Sounds, Good Words

We do not choose the loss

of parental symmetry; we slip

smiles they used to sling and pills they took

into incongruent chemistry laid bare

by decisions made unaware–

love cannot make a meal of this, if I can barely

eat for thought of her, lonely and new in a country

she threw herself into, I can barely eat

for the thought of the reflection of care I have worn

carrying an abridged, inherited likeness

so when she tells me

over lunch

that we are similar, I want to crack and stop cracking when the pieces are too small to distinguish

and I don't simp

for the moon

lonely bitch laid low by the streetlamps,

calling out to my best friend through the mania

of a world shut down; I power up

the empty avenue, going up 2nd I can crush

myself into one stomp, lost cigarettes

go flying in the half-lidded haze

of a moon too high to notch the city at night

I am down bad, losing streak having crawled

through that warm dark of the avenue to hide me

behind the shadows of the leaves on pavement, shade sits, waits for me to be braver than anything

in this night that could make me beautiful

an even lie: knocked level, cup

knifed over, scraper pushed past

the knocked-over knees of told-

There was no re-invention of the god

in this machine

who lay in wait;

If silver-splatter and rust

are in the eyes of a child waiting

by the incessant tiktik

of time lost in the twenties

to a glass-doored appliance of force and

futility

then I will wedge my foot in

and wait.

Little bower-bird of parchment burning

please find me

fleeced and footed, small

Enter: if you can hear the whine

of pan on pipes, you have come too close

to the seams of this story.

The stairway is not a haven to be chased, it

is so much marble held up as I

scuffle up patent-leather payless shoes

and declare myself champion

of this lycée; they say

she cast iron at him, and I want to cheer her

on for this, too, from the decks she never saw

[I wore the blue like soldering on my walk to the bus.

Shame can still reach you, on the bus.]

I would thank her for getting the first hit in, sybil of the childhood spent

starry-backed and eying up the lady

The heat-death of the universe seems

rather slow, in the face of this.

I walked into the halls I knew,

I blew some dust off your notes;

knowing the worst, dreams

are not often furnished here–

(There are too many statutes.)

and in the nudge between indifference, such

words turned. Spiral-spit pig on an axis,

have you been my absent god?

how sad

No man

mean nor small

can shoulder the weight

of you, all

forgotten feeling coming to a rest

outside the small taverns, the garden-

center of the universe, you smalltown

Let me carve out the hollow

of babies balanced on shoulder-tops

Marshall's is a place that no man can love

or walk away from, sober

in the way I draw myself up for the approach of the bus

noises made by the two standing by it, tall assurance in the explanation of all things great & small

I cannot pry my mother out

from these tiny roadside gods, nor will it serve

to set my sect before them, to try and solve

some secret we do not share.

But if you find me [in the airport]

watching the skywalks, waiting

for someone to help me into a chair

If I dance with you, I can hear

the sarabande playing in another room–

turn me twice over, to neglect some

bad turn is music my own

devices cannot track, but if ghosts bowed

you would drag them out of the parlour

and nail them flat with long–

drawn flings, if singing is to call the dead

then you sit on their doorstep, sordid

when the rain tells me that we have already survived

the winter

I like it; I let warmth creep into the leaks

sprung fresh in the gutter, I let lies

crawl from my frozen mouth like leaves

clearing a gutter, if dreams

made in the death of the season are true

then I've laid out more years than I've lost

but the wind picks up and reminds me

that I will survive the winter,

you're taking up too much space, man

suspends us by planting foot on solid rock

and, coming back

(a landing)

push on his brain until it's hard rubber

and he drives

(up through the lonely night,

waiting to be fallen into)

until the cds skitter, next to me

and the radio sleeps

there is beauty riding in the night, some

things I am too stubborn to relent to:

-conspiracy theorists

-idle gods

there is a man in the night, unfair

to us both: he cannot see the world

I don't know you; perhaps I never did

perhaps from belonging I am always half-hid

perhaps time will fall all at once, like pain

perhaps in several months I'll wish you nearer and crueler

perhaps you cannot hold but crush me under your hand

and I was always meant to live

with my head pressed to the laminate of this old house

perhaps unkind is just your band of kinship, but I should like so much

for it not to be.

I do not want to be lovingly crushed, incapable under your good hands

I want soft ones to turn me tamely

see the streaks and feed their hungry potential

some times

happen on the porch, I push through

today, and 700 B.C like two screens

to shut out the same wind;

I have probably made a sailor's wife

in another life, cry stretching back out

asking the wind to chill me in the sky, so when

I sit on the porch I can hear

the same echo or the lost, unloved thing

waiting for what I may bring back

The men from my childhood are spitting pixels

singing on your camera-phone, there's no woman

more evil than the one I grew into

leaving you by the door with shoes