anniversary ceremonies (the things we cannot incinerate so we lie)

anniversary ceremonies (the things we cannot incinerate so we lie)

Why would you shatter somebody like me

“You Were a Kindness,” The National

My memory drives the people in my life crazy because I remember everything, always, in exacting detail. My memory was a gift until it became a curse, until no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget things I desperately needed to forget so I might survive.

An Untamed State, Roxane Gay

this weekend returns each sunny May

billowing smoke that forces me to lie

#

first i had to gather everything

in order to shred it all carefully

i formed a frame with six sticks

where the pyre smoldered to soot

the smell lingered reminding me

of melting 1000 pennies or dreams

this is how i turn from year to year

collecting ash to ash for the rising

because there are thunder and storms

in springtime leaving a blanket of hail

#

the heart is not flame retardant Kevlar

and memories never work as kindling

miracles & dust

miracles & dust

Don’t talk to me about being alone.

“Fretless,” R.E.M.

I may have been a lousy painter, but what a collector I turned out to be!

Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut

when i fell

in love with you

the gods & faeries

with their miracles & dust

never showed me

the whole picture

i’ve glimpsed it now

well after the fact of us

a giant mural hidden in the barn

at the end of a novel

•

in this smoldering aftermath

the calculations do not add up

to any other possibility

as if free will matters to a heart

because except for the end

i would not have it any other way

the truth of a detailed painting

fixing everything right there to behold

exposes the sincerity of a relinquished heart

in the body of a frail & flawed being

hollowed out by the inevitable subtraction

of the human clock we couldn’t stop if we tried

•

i am walking across a parking lot

where years ago you yelled at me

“Hey, old man!” standing with your mother

who apologized embarrassed by your rudeness

all of us then were unwilling to tell the truth

to ourselves or anyone else especially in a parking lot

now when all those truths have been buried again

i pause listening before i look over my shoulder

just in case

•

i hold on

tight enough not to let go

loose enough not to strangle

now a patient monk

tracing the images i designed carelessly

conjuring tomorrow today on our yesterday carefully

meditation at last

on all the ways i could not handle before

blinded by your miracles & blinded by your dust

withering plants, bloat kings, & hangovers from dreaming of you

withering plants, bloat kings, & hangovers from dreaming of you

Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed

Hamlet to Queen Gertrude

Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4, lines 181-182

Human touch is so distant

“Metaphoric Diary,” Sally Wen Mao

(i)

plants wither

drawing into themselves

the absence of water

impossible to hide

& if we care at all

we can see what needs to be done

(ii)

humans on the other hand

inflate as we age

puffing up against the loss

in bloat arrogance & denial

like kings pilfering their brother’s wives

as if they shall not rot

(iii)

prone to drink

i have often risen in the wake of hangovers

but all that practice

(and there has been ample practice)

could not prepare me

for the mornings after dreaming of you

no hair of the dog or pints of beer

can still the staggering swirl of you there

arriving angry in my dream

at the inevitable me who fails you even in sleep

i swell with the absence of you

barely able to lift my feet against this headache and dry tongue

(iv)

& if we care at all

we can see what needs to be done

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