we write only what we know
the verbs wake us, keep us awake
with their incense
they surround us, their incessant
songs waking what once was night
now morning
now lunchtime
we write only of our narrow view
while bukowski paened his whores
and his liquors
we pain only for our shadows
these are not friends, at night i drink with
a hundred acquaintances
while my friend is dead, asleep
all his verbs now gifts to outlines
that remain
* * *
Cleaning out the drafts. Written in late 2008.
Sister says, mother never lied
And father never told the truth;
Everything changes after that.
Why did it come so late,
Reason,
In its absence, one might still know
Magnificence, the outpouring of warmth,
Cross-eyed plateaus
From which the sky unfurled
And even keeled solitude,
A favorite companion.
Then it arrived,
Guarded like a gnawed tibia
In the storage closet.
Whole skeletons unraveled,
Filed amongst disco pants
And an odd tweed coat;
A dirty decade of unlaundered secrets.
There is no consolation, not yet,
Mother only knew her truth
Father believed his lies;
Everything changed before that.
* * *
Cleaning out the drafts. Written in mid 2009.
Well, we were young
And turtlenecked all through spring, then it was
Summer on a turning millennium;
And when we turned
From one another, way back when,
It seemed like youth was always a safe excuse
To have been in love:
The heart darts and pushes
Past the curtains
Of sunshine, a furred critter
Suddenly wild.
Then, David says we can’t be it all.
I’d like to know why not (though
his logic is irrefutable),
A short fall cuts to a long winter;
The things in between
Were made in opposition.
The millennium no longer young;
Well, then there was that slow day so many
Years later
Wondering if this cat twisting
On my chest was a thing
Returned
Or if that other thing
Had ever run past the gardens
Into those wicked billows of sunshine.