I sat here to stare, and eavesdrop, six inches from the eastern bloc and conversations I can’t understand. Spy stories only. I shook my notebook open and a star fell free, with faint recognition for this dead-drop relief. A nod from the past, awake among Sunday’s dirty dishes, remembered in their clanging dirge. The plot thickens, bright in spring noir.
Even at my stillest…
…I am running circles of suspicious intent.
I am the river, arterial
I am the tributary
twined with many others
swift in one direction
at times I overflow
Sudden debilitation on a Monday, mid-morning. I am not here. Staring into faces of the future as they appear in the ceiling tiles. Because what you think of me matters and I hate that about me.
Ornate and open. Fixed gold on the wall, fixed faith aesthetic for all my secret freedoms. Fixed frame memory for all my screaming one-and-all’s, my sex and silence, tears and falls. My inhibitions, intuition, blaring blues and favorite songs, I’m angry, anxious, tired, small…and always there you are. Looking back, invited into warm voyeur. A reflection of quiet conspiracy and Delphic disclosure.
Mirror.
Mirror.
I have loved myself only in the names of faces that have escaped my memory.
I was cold, but
I couldn’t move to
take the headphones off
for fear
of missing a note
no minute, no
melody skipped
just night chills
in the drift, open apartment
and this
song, my open heart
I’m always falling into things, like prayers of old enlightenment, in dashed nostalgia to remind me it was real...left in the short space between my fingers grasping for air.
here is a traveling noun
and I am a traveler
on little deviations,
options, adventures
through the inescapable
map shifting about the
carpet, laid
up close a thousand paths
here is a traveling noun
I’ve had too much
coffee, laid here
long enough
and I’m tired of traveling
the color of morning
filtered by three panes
the sun fills the black of
my early narrow eyes, 7am
the dirty sliding door shows
dog prints of the day
multiplied
the empty glass in my hand
held up to the light, smudged faint
in translucent coffee brown
to fill the glass
to borrow heat from the glow-orange
of my fingers to the day
only to return in
the color of morning
filtered by three panes
something about the summertime
and running the creeks long legs
in the endless light of the solstice.
something about the heat
and dirt in the east coast air,
swimming through it
so it sticks to your skin,
soaked, sweaty hair across the lines of your face
where salt drips to your tongue
through the corners of your mouth
earning years of dirty youth.
and lightning bugs at dusk against the grey,
green lawns
humidity thick on our voices
screaming out of breath with
a thousand false flashes across
the street trailing our memory in yellow
streaks and long exposure.
it’s February tonight
the streets are quiet in my headphones
and I miss the summer sweet.
You chase it in spaced out seconds after your favorite songs because the lyrics left you reeling. Traces of enlightenment in every stranger, flecks of gold in your field, the light between two eyes in passing. There was the thought, yours but only loaned out. There was the stunned space, and a long forgetting. There you are in weeks, afloat in the same rooms reciting prayers in the same melody and flipping switches on the off-white walls with your fingers crossed. You seek the same lighting and a trance, futile swears to something from hot breath frustration. Maybe it never happened. Maybe you should light a candle, the flame glow and the plants shadow thrown to the wall haven’t been tried. Maybe the state of questioning is the only soundtrack you know.
I’m checking my junk mail for notes lost in the cracks. Those telltale signs, those brief attachments, couch cushion of the universe kind. I’ll lose sleep over these, and other sad songs on the internet, and other questions I didn’t ask, and other truths I’ll stretch to frayed ends to satisfy the silence of mixed vibrations. We don’t lose touch anymore, we choose to disappear with sigils of the 21st century, into the new salt of the earth.
I’m always falling into things, like the little space between two of my favorite words posed together, floating from bedlam behind my teeth.
a little red in the wrong glass
nights like these, i don’t like the stems
but it sips right
it’s just me and it’s early
its getting late
the dog is pacing, pawing at every wall
so am i
it’s nice like this
but sometimes i just
want to make it through a night
without the longing
of another life
stiff in the winter arms
of the trees across the street