…In a mirrored apartment
that your father bequeathed
to you after his murder
I escaped the world,
skyrise-high
above the East River
and the bleached ribs
of the Whitestone bridge
where seagulls lazily played
in the panoramic blue
outside your picture window.
We savored meals
of dreams and secrets:
hiding in bookstores,
swimming in crystal blue
of chlorinated pools,
wandering Manhattan streets…
The world outside this room is buzzing
with fireflies and summer, and a thousand problems
hover in the heat outside our window.
I’m not listening tonight.
I’m locked in this soap bubble some nebula blew
that somehow sealed around us, mirrored and shifting.
We’re safe here. For now, until the rainbows turn silver,
and time’s up. I hold you, lying still—
not wanting it to burst…
…How do people do the things they do?
How do they build and stack their plans?
Their blueprints dazzle me.
I’ve lost the key.
The ornaments of adulthood
were expensive. I saved up for them
with my allowance. Learned everything
way past acceptable deadlines.
Now they’re all falling off my tree at
once and glitter bombing the carpet;
and the shards cut my feet
so I’ve started walking on tiptoe
as the walls of life contract
around me…
On a quiet street of brick and oaks,
the mind of high summer:
a pale green notion of sound
cicadas, thinking with their wings —
possessing the treetops
in irridescent plunder
like the sacred scarabs of Egypt,
land of our bondage…
…When I drive on the Mohawk trail,
it’s a sort of sex—car and road
on full alert, breathing in rhythm
to the changing scenery.
A shift from two to three dimensions;
a falling, lurching into something
like love.
My senses can’t sleep
as this topographic music
approaches its peak, temperature dropping
degree by degree—the slow towns and farms
all passed far behind me; inclines shifting
as my car swerves like a pinball on its curves.
The Cold River’s ominous congress
through rocks, deafening—
reminding me that this road
is dangerous, and people die on it…
…I want sky and clouds
and the white squint of light,
not this hollow gray night
rent through with a whistle
but the salt truck came again
today
and yesterday too:
my shoes crunch on the crystals
collecting in drifts
and I’m tired of running
past shanties and tracks
on an electrified bridge
trying not to step in the cracks,
and wishing I could just
get back home
to you…
Sunday morning
and it’s just you and me
on this day,
unseasonably cool
and bright with the promise
of dawn and nourishment
as you stand beside me
carefully, chair tucked
backward against the counter
just as I’ve showed you—
you offer
onomonapeaic commentary
on the sizzle of pancakes
we co-create,
frozen blueberries dropping
within each pale thought-bubble
to a backdrop of jazz…
How could I forget a kiss?
I know it’s strange to forget this
when I think of how you entered my life
like a monsoon: a sudden pressure drop
and rainbow macaws streaked across flat gray sky
like the mist auras on spigots
long after it stopped raining —
on that summer day when you picked me
with your nimble white fingers
like sea glass on a beach
that day the subway stopped
due to a sudden accident
when someone tripped on the train tracks
and died instantly of a heart attack…
you warned me of your delicacy,
but I flipped right through your preface
and saw into the moonstone eye
of your heart-story, like aurora
borealis, silvery contrails
of heroically falling dreams
streaking and shifting in blue turns
as they tremble and singe in the atmosphere
of a dense planet, over polar magnitudes
where entire seasons are devoted
to the exclusive practice
of darkness or light—…
it occurs to me
late
(really late)
around that time when internet research decays
from topics of insolvency and fellowships
to tongue splitting, furries and Rasputin’s pickled cock
that I am really, really lonely
for you
and my brain,
radioactive and glowing,
has decided
(after all possible avenues for defilement
that Google and the human race have catalogued)…
… On days like today
when the sky burns
with a particular blue
like the burnt-glare eye
of turquoise,
warding off evil
and courting cumulus clouds
who danced like new lambs
as they only do
after thunderstorms,
I remember the day
you came into this world:…
The strangest pain is too much joy—
I stagger under its weight.
Born too bright,
I crave shadow,
my face fading
in the burning light.
There is no skeleton,
only skin—
There is only pleasure,
never sin.
I levitate easily into the sun:
in dreams I float right in,
dissolving
atom by atom
in its permanent grin.
