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.

disembodied

disembodied

I am disembodied,

free to travel in space or time.

I come to you

without coming to you.

There, I take your hand

without taking your hand.

I ask you to remember

without asking you to remember:

We met as we often did

after long separations

and at intersections of us.

You asked if we could not sit in a car

so you could hug me standing, saying,

“I couldn’t wait to do this.”

I always cherished being near you,

but I can admit this now I think:

I failed to see how frazzled you were.

I failed to see, to acknowledge

how hard you tried to hold onto us

and how that frayed the edges of you.

I ask you if these failures

killed the possibility of us,

or if you simply grew out of me,

out of us—my greatest fear.

•

I found the movie again—

the one I’d stopped watching

in the middle the night before.

I never intended to watch

this movie that seemed trite

but compelled me to watch.

And it was there in this film

I saw flashes of myself,

flashes I didn’t want to see.

And then the predictable:

she kissed him suddenly

raised on her toes, eyes closed.

She pulled away softly and slowly,

still on her toes, her chin turned up,

her eyes closed against this thing, smiling.

These things matter, these givings,

these precious moments lingering

in the space between us, disembodied.

•

I am disembodied

and I raise my hands that are not hands

to feel the vibrations of the universe,

to reach out to reclaim the moment

your heels returned to the pavement

that day you raised on your toes

to hug me, to kiss me, and to let me know

that all of this was everything to you—

if only I had known how to know then.

I am disembodied,

free to travel in space or time.

I return to the day I handed you

a Milan Kundera novel.

I hold the book firmly

as you take it in your hands,

And I look straight into your eyes

looking back into mine to say:

“I am there now and always

without being there now and always.”