Tarame never had a daughter (Anomaly)

Tarame never had a daughter (Anomaly)

Tarame never had a daughter

who loved him

with understanding.

But he could sit on the beach

watching the ocean

and imagine her:

She was named Anomaly

and she was unlike anybody

like him unlike anybody.

There in common

their uncommon

they recognized.

Tarame never had a daughter

who loved him

with understanding.

But he could sit on the beach

watching the ocean

and imagine her understanding.

intimacy (men&women)

intimacy (men&women)

the things that matter most

fall through the gaps between

the universes of men&women

(i)

intimacy

i am walking across this planet

concentrating on not floating away

to keep my feet touching earth

i imagine this plea from me to you

you lie on the couch and read a book

a book i have read and given you a copy

you rest your feet in my lap while you read

and i hold them bare in my hands eyes closed

and ride that moment on the couch with you

somewhere between dream and imagination

we each in our own separate worlds together

travelling through that book’s world together

(ii)

for all the words i should have said and didn’t

for all the words i said and shouldn’t have

for all the things i should have done and didn’t

for all the things i did and shouldn’t have

in this corporeal existence in the time of not us

when i have no idea what to do or say ad infinitum

i buy you every book i read

building a library to you and for you

i read 1Q84 in hardback

yours is a collection of paperbacks

three in a box and still wrapped in plastic

(iii)

i imagine a future

with your feet in my hands

you are reading 1Q84 book 2

we are silent on the couch

i am listening for everything

i failed to hear before and now

to lie in bed (appeasement)

to lie in bed (appeasement)

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.

So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover.”

—Oshima, Kafka at the Shore, Haruki Murakami

maybe these were all acts of appeasement

gentleness sculpted from arcs of imbalance

we found moments to share our other worlds

despite the gravity of our efforts against orbits

there was a time like many many other times

i visited your apartment and spent the night

you insisted i share your bed in a platonic truce

so we arrived between sheets anxious travellers

to lie in bed side by side you doing crosswords

i imagine my face between bare shoulder blades

you have the room cold because you know me

and then you drape your left leg over my right

you are smiling and concentrating on the puzzle

and we both remain silent in the chilled bedroom

we found ourselves there in layers to lie in bed

to lie to those who did not know we were together

to lie to each other as we ignored shared longing

to lie to ourselves about the world we had missed

to lie in bed was precious like a translucent marble

treasured by a child in wonderment for a cat’s eye

that night and other times when i pressed my foot
against the sole of yours they fit perfectly perfectly

cautious (resignation)

cautious (resignation)

we were cautious you & i

calculating & careful

about the possible us

about the brief us

about the forever us

instead we should have plunged in heart-first

made a mess no one could have ever erased

left a mark bold & deep & permanent

resignation to caution is the feast of the living dead

•

i am reading my third Haruki Murakami novel

when the word resignation begins to haunt me

and then there it is several pages after i recognize

i am thinking incessantly about my fear of resignation

the narrator mentions Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”

so i re-read that story finding again the word resignation

is the tragedy of being human our resignation to resignation?

•

that night

my dream is a dream

of resignation to sleep

i am driving and it is night

my car doesn’t run as it should

i feel myself drifting to sleep

embracing sleep while driving

i struggle awake or in and out

of that precious sleeping to coax

my car to work to propel me forward

as it will not in this heaviness dreaming

i do not struggle once awake resigned as i am to caution

•

he found himself awake

standing at the back door

staring at broken gnomes

figurines blown off the railing

he stood there quite awhile

the thought of how to anchor

the collection against the gusts

held him still as the car in his dream

calculating (the erased)

calculating (the erased)

someone always runs the numbers
simple addition can confirm a massacre

but for each person and in each home

loss is a tale of subtraction without zero

we calculate risk and how the body count

came to this blood-stained thing before us

we fret over whether our days are numbered
like tiny children gone saved only in memories

and in the end it becomes what we can count on
what human costs we will endure when multiplied

these are the products of our formulas fabricating
a world where the erased never leave our ledger

filled (a second heart)

filled (a second heart)

it took him a very long time

and even when he found

a heart surgeon who’d listen

his story sounded fantastic:

“Hold on a minute,” the first surgeon said,

holding up a finger before leaving the room.

He returned with a colleague, another surgeon.

“I want you to listen to this with me, please.”

“Let me get this straight,” the first surgeon said.

“You don’t need or want a heart transplant?”

The two surgeons faced him leaning forward.

“Right. My heart is fine. It’s just filled. With her.”

“You don’t care about anything else, right?”

The first surgeon asked, turning to the second.

“I can’t care about anything else. No room, none.”

So the three sat there for several minutes pondering.

“You need a second heart,” the first surgeon said.

He nodded with his hand over his heart, sincere.

With time and several tests, in the end, they proved

his heart in fact was filled with her, entirely filled.

what’s a person to do so filled with love

to care about anything else was theater

pretense and only gestures and fanfare

as if anything else at all could matter

layers (stranger in my own dreams)

layers (stranger in my own dreams)

"Can you say that for sure? Without a doubt?" she asked, pressing me for confirmation.

"Yes, I can say it for sure. I'm going to take you home."

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

i found you in a bar

a bar where i was lost in a strange city

a strange city buried in a long dream

a long dream like a gift of your blond hair

in the real world or what we call the real world

the real world is closing in on the Winter Solstice

the Winter Solstice prepares us for the coming Spring

the coming Spring is dream is memory is warm hope

i am filled with the eternal emptiness of having lost

having lost now defines me by the thing i am not

i am not sure i can step beyond the shortest daylight

the shortest daylight pushes me against walls closing in

we speak of the heart as if this part of us is a separate thing

a separate thing that makes more sense shaped by metaphor

shaped by metaphor the heart breaks longs turns to stone

turns to stone in a desperate attempt to survive long nights

in a dream in a strange city at the bar i turn to see you

to see you and your blond hair and know i don’t belong

i don’t belong in these dreams or in your waking days

your waking days break my heart longing turned to stone

i am a stranger in my own dream and i know i am lost

i am lost in this city but i recognize i exist at the edge

i exist at the edge of everything that warms my chest

my chest is a hollow cage with no bird and no song

we used to talk you and i because we knew we knew

we knew some things fit together without any effort

without any effort this world tied us in a forever bow

a forever bow around a forever box wrapped forever

half-life (weightier than plutonium)

half-life (weightier than plutonium)

even radioactivity decays

a permanent state of half-life

dissipating always toward zero

like a stagnant puddle of water

silently, diligently evaporating

back to dry dirt and exposed hole

•

they inspected these bodies for decades

the scientists themselves grew old and died

replaced by new ones always in protective gear

ninety-four bodies eradicated by the nuclear end

everyone had feared and predicted and caused

forcing humanity to study radiation’s plight

the race between radioactivity and fleshbloodbone

wound down to the end just as the math predicted

“Looks like we don’t need the suits anymore”

the first one holding the data said to the second one

but the second one reached out stopping the first one

beginning to disengage and remove the precious helmet

“Look at this” the second one said nodding his head

toward one of the piles of bones and pointing back

at the chart of numbers he tapped with a shaking hand

“He’s been dead since, well, you know, the end”

the first one said scanning the charts to look himself

“But we don’t know anything about this sort of thing”

“I suspect” said the second one “we’d better keep

the suits on for quite some time around this one”

and that was where science wasn’t sure what to do

•

etched in the bones beyond decay

flesh stripped by atomic blasts

and beneath all their calculations

radiating from him eternally

was something immeasurable

and weightier than plutonium:

his life without her had been his half-life

but he still loved her with all his heart

and what on earth could they do with that?

time travel (in this time after the End)

time travel (in this time after the End)

“It would liberate me forever from this hopeless prison, this pain of being me.”

Letter from Lieutenant Mamiya, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

it is 2010 i fall back to

tumble fully and deeply

unlike any SF film or book

i am sitting at a bar

in Savannah, Georgia

it is loud and i am tired

i am with cycling friends

but alone on a single stool

at the corner of the bar

exhaustion and beer cloud

my mind steeled by noise

until one song opens it

i shout to a friend beside me

“who sings this song?”

he answers wrong but close

my search for “Frances”

finds Florence + the Machine

to lie buried almost two years

•

that was before the fall

but very close to the End

i did not and could not see

when i listen to that music now

i trip and slip back two years

and look at my empty hands

Florence + the Machine pulses

into my chest a soundtrack

for all my time indistinguishable

my past my present and my future

have blurred like a Tralfamadorian

nightmare—“this pain of being me”

•

in this time after the End

no different really than

before or during or after

i am reading my second

Murakami novel all alone

sitting at the bottom of a well

i wake each morning now

to negotiate with frailty

insolence and calcification

i depend on strangers’ words

sung and written and spun

keeping a dead heart beating

and i am a time traveller true

fixed at no point in time because

there is no point to time alone

i touch the cover of the novel

and test its weight in my hand

before beginning to read again

i plug the iPod into my car stereo

and choose Florence + the Machine

to wrap myself for returning to you

thank you (& tales of a nude man)

thank you (& tales of a nude man)

we part at the coffee shop

diverging again into our separate lives

turning i say "i love you"

& later you send a message:

"thank you for saying 'i love you'"

•

many months pass

many

even years

november to november to november

i slip off my clothes

& sit there

waiting

and no one comes

no one

•

they have proven the future

& like the present

i am not in it

& i have the mirror to prove it

my reptilian brain (beware the buffalo): anniversary of my sorrow

my reptilian brain (beware the buffalo): anniversary of my sorrow

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
Or tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well, I'd still have felt it.
Where's the sense in that?

“White Flag,” Dido

your presence sates my reptilian brain

your absence tramples my soul

like a heard of stampeding buffalo

•

like the last day itself

the anniversary of my sorrow

passed before i realized

but realization is a luxury

lying in a warm bath relaxing

not scrubbing away the grime

the reptilian brain lies beneath

layers of other ways of knowing

blanketed by limbic and neocortex

and yes i smile and even laugh

but memories buried are not faded

these masks evolutionary camouflage

a sorrow seeded by circles of secrecy

a sorrow like a Sisyphean boomerang

a sorrow born and one year gone

and now my ritual of being is me

i am my rite of sorrow and recollection

at least that is what i think deep down

hoof-battered and caked with dust

sand in my mouth and across my lips

the desert floor has made up my mind

the bones of birds and dinosaurs pressed

so deeply into stone that we have forgotten

how to love the imprint of life in fossils

•

your presence sates my reptilian brain

your absence tramples my soul

like a heard of stampeding buffalo

i am a flying dragon

i am a flightless rhea

my sole performance

pretending to be human

dragons (R.I.P.)

dragons (R.I.P.)

There's a ghost in my lungs
And it sighs in my sleep,
Wraps itself around my tongue,
As it softly speaks…

“I’m Not Calling You a Liar,” Florence + the Machine

i am in no hurry to slay the dragon

these beasts lurking in my mind

occasionally stalking a dream

but mostly my ever-present demons

i am in no hurry to slay the dragon

these beasts lurking in my mind

whether with somnolent pills

or perpetual sessions on the couch

i am in no hurry to slay the dragon

these beasts lurking in my mind

because on that other side of slayed

the only thing i’ll be is rest in peace

living you see for me is this waking fantasy

a quilt a collage a paper mache a cacophony

without the dragon and beasts i might forget

and walk into this room or that as if i belong

novocaines of sweet therapy and tranquil pills

remove the ache yes but erase my longing too

i am a bachelor committed to boulder and hill

always wed completely monogamous to you

who became only the memory of you and us

lurking in my heart you fire-breathing dragon

furnace of my alienation my desert dwelling

cavernous are these depths echoing you you

i find a slip of paper and a pen

and i write frantically

something i long to share

with you only only you

rendered gray and hollow

and solitary as a dragon

there like shattered glass

i force myself to sign this note

like all the others

R.I.P.

the lesser of two evils (2102)

the lesser of two evils (2102)

Post-apocalyptic ignorance hid their civilized past,

but there remained a trace of this thing called Democracy:

•

They all had two days—

one day to hunt and protect,

and another free to choose.

After these sacred days

their new King would be chosen

and a certain peace declared.

The choice was in fact simple

because the numbers were clear

for White53 and his family.

The GreatD promised to eat equally

black, brown, and white babies;

this was his pledge to the land.

The Great R promised to eat only

black and brown babies, the custom,

for he believed in the White traditions.

•

Deities, I suppose, or historians and archeologists

far, far in the future may wonder about slumbering babies…

choice (Vote!)

choice (Vote!)

Circus was a festive land, especially at Festival.

Every citizen was proud to be part of the 3Rings.

This day the Tent was snaked with lines to vote,

and he had learned the slogans by heart as a child:

“Your Ring, Your Clown, Your Choice” and

“A Choice Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.”

So he waited his turn to choose between two cards—

Ring 1: Barnum Party Blue, Ring 2: Bailey Party Red.

Either choice he already knew, but dared not utter:

When he chose his card and returned to the elephants,

he remained forever Carny1691 with a shovel because

nothing was ever different behind the paint of a Clown.