Monday, October 13, 2014

i do not fall in love

i do not fall in love

I won't need any help to be lonely when you leave me
“Slipped,” The National


i do not fall in love with perfect
i did not fall in love to find your faults and fix you

i could make quite a list
of all the ways you drove me mad again and again

but if we had negotiated on even one
you would have no longer been the you i love madly

and my disingenuous professions of love
would have been manipulations seeking someone else

i do not fall in love with perfect
i did not fall in love to find your faults and fix you

and so i must now face the ugliest truth
wanting as i do to change your mind about me

realizing as i do the you not wanting me
is the only you i have ever loved and always will

Friday, October 10, 2014

lies, paralysis, & all the things we cannot recover

lies, paralysis, & all the things we cannot recover

Yeah, I'm missing something
Abel, my mind's gone loose inside the shell
“Abel,” The National

i wake up in a bed of snakes
assuming that all the lies i live by
have been rendered real to cradle me

the first thing they all do is ask me
with their heads tilted just so “How do you feel?”
as if they are intent on listening seriously

they seem completely unaware of the snakes
because of course they too are magnificent liars
and no one acknowledges another’s bed of snakes

this is simply a ploy to allow a brief pause
before they tell me the consequences of The Accident
“The Accident,” they explain, “has left you paralyzed”

as if The Accident is a sentient creature like the snakes
and it is then i realize neither the snakes nor the paralysis
is even close to the worst of this bed i have made to lie in

you see the snakes are simply all those lies come alive
and paralysis is the manifestation of the inner me
the paralysis i have covered in a hissing bed of lies

the worst of it all is something only i can tell them
which is that i have no memory of my past life at all
with this their heads tilt again and they declare

“Ah, well, we are not sure about the paralysis,” they admit,
but we can certainly help you rebuild your past!”
and so they begin to tell me everything they can offer

strangers, family, and friends are all the same to me
but they each sit patiently one by one beside my bed of snakes
telling me stories in no particular order with no clear value

paralyzed and lying in a bed of snakes i know mostly one thing
something or more importantly someone remains lost in this
something or someone i can never recover is my final fate

knowing there is a vast and precious unknown i cannot recover
leaves me paralyzed and hopeless as a snake in a foot of snow
wishing to recover the unknown and all the sadness it brings

Thursday, October 9, 2014

polish (this did not happen)

polish (this did not happen)

Then, without hesitation, she grasped Tengo’s hand, and looked up into his face….
Then she suddenly let go his hand, and with the hem of her skirt flaring, she trotted out of the classroom.
1Q84Haruki Murakami


i prefer black nail polish
or shades so dark they appear black

although “prefer” understates
this fascination and my jealousy

and then i see your most desired hands
the polish a pinkish-orange i’d call melon

so i ask you if i may hold your hands
each nail like a precious Jordan almond

and you smile raising your hands to me sighing
it’s been so long since we’ve held hands”


it wasn’t you
this did not happen

the hand and nail polish more pink than orange
merely a passing car and someone i do not know

and then the fist of remembering you pounding in my chest
while i alone in my car drove down this black highway

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

diligence (skeleton key)

diligence (skeleton key)

Perhaps an even more distressing prospect for Habara than the cessation of sexual activity,
however, was the loss of the moments of shared intimacy.
“Scheherazade,” Haruki Murakami

I'm having trouble inside my skin
I tried to keep my skeletons in
“Slipped,” The National

gradually and with reluctance
i have whittled away at my own resolve
to fulfill your wishes when you left

and then as i am walking to my morning class
a student in front of me tells another goodbye
saying your name rattling in my chest like a can

these hauntings erode my diligence to your requests
to live as if we never were and never will be again
i stand on the precipice of this my toes curled at the edge


i am reading a new Murkami short story
and it is toward the end when i realize
he is writing about the thing eroding me

and fueling my constant melancholy
because i cannot share this story with you
the thing that matters most about all that matters

everything is reduced in magnitude without you
dimmed dulled and nearly erased except what could be
and there is the limit of my diligence hidden in bone


when they dismember me
the skeleton key will be
the thing they come to see

the thing that can set me free
opening the door with a skeleton key
that allows me to be and to see


i hear your name and i recall your hands
making me the happiest and saddest i can be