Mental Math

Ask me your portion of the cheque or the tax rate in Massachusetts and you're certain to be met with a blank stare, at best. However, I breathe in and calculate complex formulae known to the ancient Sumerians, only recently rediscovered by modern mathematicians – the silent language of abomination, the science of decimation. I lock my keys in the car, but can't manage to forget the way the rain painted your hair, sparked blue in the dark halo of your eyes and face. When asked my age, I stutter and estimate, but remember the precise shape of the strange puzzle of your bones. Molecular weights, the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, they're all gone, but the burst of white and gasp that exploded as you tossed your head and laughed that night it stays and stays. My own birthday slipped past, but the wet, warm crumbling wood of the park bench beneath me is as fresh in my mind as though it had been this morning.

The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn

The Orange

My feet find their way on the cold white pine, toes curling against themselves, miserly with their quickly escaping warmth. I stand in the kitchen, longing for bitterness to answer the sour tang of panic, adrenaline gone stale. But I do not like coffee and contemplating the effort of tea and sugar and milk exhausts me.

Letting hunger and nausea in turns burn a hole in my stomach, I turn my mind to the day, to the shower and drive ahead. My hair hangs in a limp fan across my shoulders, snaking around my ears and neck. I would sooner cut it off than wash it again, if only I could muster the will.

Surprising myself, I reach across the nearly empty counter to dig my nails into the peel of an orange. Pulling it close, the wild effluvium smothers me in a dark and seething nostalgia. I drown it beneath the sharp spray of juice that rips across my face as I tear the fruit in half.

It might as well be tractor wheel. It might as well be a mirror as I lift it to my lips, bleeding and supple. I gag and spit it into the sink, leaving the white pulp shivering in stainless steel.

Aching, I limp back to the warm dark cocoon of my bed, the strange scent of citrus winding behind.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

- Dylan Thomas

How I Pass my Days These Days

I trace the long, slow arc of sun across the window. I read too many books, wait for your puzzles and shy laugh.

You have strangely gentle hands, flickering like nervous birds. I fear your goodness, thinking on it, wondering if my dark jokes have struck somewhere soft and silent. If anything, you teach me to choose my words carefully.

I comfort myself, since you are so far away, remembering the line of your jaw. We create small joys, and so it is mainly small joys I imagine, the quick laugh and flick of the eyes, your rambling stories unfolding coltishly.

You are not like me. Tonight I spilled half a jar of almond essence and laughed and tasted amaretto, my room is strewn with clothes and jewelry, I don't even wince when someone spills wine on the new sofa cover. I laugh too loudly, speak too often.

But I'm already there, with you. I sit on the windowsill and pet your wicked little cat, she wiggles out of reach and you stop to put your lips to mine, quickly, not interrupting your concentration on your recipe.

Arsenic Snacks

My best friend eats
apple cores
and drinks coconut water.

She says it is
economical
and healthy.

I say she is
dreaming
of foreign lands,
long trips on clipper ships.

Nested in Myrrh

I have long listened at doors in empty hallways, with only the faraway sound of clattering metal and the gold-whispering dust turning in the light. It is beyond all sense now, to dissemble, too late I have warned you of scars in bone and sinew, but I tell you now; if hope is a thing with feathers, its carcass is on my doorstep. Wild, unnameable things have torn at it, now it is a ghost of gut and wing.

I kneel, hope it has nested in myrrh.

I have never had a listener, a reader. Especially not one who waits for each word, wants in silence until I speak.

If You Follow

If there are words, they are as yet unknown to me. I have spent hours spinning spells, invoking ghosts long since settled, but those fruits have left my mouth sour, my eyes shining and wild.

Against good sense and sound advice I find a narrow path; I seek a darkened sun. I bear my burdens alone, often in a world with too few dimensions to support life.

I have not known kindness, and I do not speak to trust, not here. Those are words spoken low and whispered in foreign tongues.

It was easier, I moved from consequence, I drew demons in sand and sky and moved on again. If you follow, if all my stories are told; where, then, will I go?

It's Not About Robots

I hope time and isolation have not done damage beyond repair. I hope your heart has not grown silent, but instead was waiting, in stasis, or that you were finding your way out of a labyrinth of your own making.

You are careful, and those words are so new, and still strange in your mouth. I wonder how you could know that I smile as you struggle to find your way into conversation.

I would unwind you from those many long nights alone, if you would find me beneath so many layers of ice and wind.

I am tired and worn ragged on the rocks, having missed the lighthouse by some miles. I would undo whatever brought me here, but if not for that, then I would not have your name or your secrets. I hope you are patient, even if my language is dense and foreign. I hope you have a way with broken things, with nervous and unsure things.

The Likelihood of Happiness, Heartache

For RJH

I work out facts and figures, the likelihood of happiness, heartache, each on an actuarial table with signs and symbols previously unknown to me.

I invent formulae of such complexity the variables become unmanageable, publish them in obscure journals in languages I do not speak.

I have no reason for hope, but it burns bright out of cracks and fissures from a poorly repaired heart.

It is the first time I wake to think of you, the first time I think of you and laugh, and wonder if you would laugh to know.

It is not good

It has recently become clear that it is not good for me to miss my exit while driving alone. I pull over and turn the radio on. For no reason at all, just the sound of a voice not my own makes me think of you and I stop, rest my head on the steering wheel and sob until my throat is raw.

It is also not good to believe any promises given, especially that I'll be glad after it's over. What a fool to nod and say yes, yes, yes that I know one day I'll never again speak your name, that I'll crawl into a dark bed alone and smile to remember you. I'll never tell you that to keep from thinking of you I imagine a world, any world other than this. I sometimes forget, lose the reigns of fantasy and you, no, not even you, the idea of you comes back to me. And you wind your fingers in my hair and spark in the dark like electricity.

La lumière

I'd have bargained, begged. For fuck's sake, I'd have wept tears of blood, torn my hair, thrown myself to the ground.

Instead, I unknowingly sought a more subtle poison, your half-stunned joy. It was a gorgeous thing to share and I crept towards it, flinching wildly with every silence, every misspoken word.

How do you bear it? What reason can you give, now, for that useless hope?

What terrible grief did I uncover there, in that long-deserted wreckage?

It was you, after all, reaching out an empty hand. With the wisdom of long years and many failed expeditions, I observed silently your wounded smile, your careful laugh. I found you beneath an avalanche of folly and plans long ago gone awry and forgotten.

I glimpsed then, your true self, unmirrored and sure. How quickly you unfolded for me stories of midnight suns and crinolines ripped in a darkened cloakroom, your lips smeared dark.

You insisted I had found you, had rediscovered you, the cascade of bright longing and secret lusts springing forth from a heart stoppered for all the world like a champagne bottle.

I braved the tundra, the rocks and ice. I felt for the path beneath the terrible will of the fog, then grew parched beneath a venomous sun. I waited for morning, licking dew from a few ragged leaves, and by nightfall was lost beneath a terrible seething jungle.

Now I only curse the path, look for signs and symbols in the sun and the burning green grass.

Without destination, I turn inward like a broken compass, wait in a willful silence for the phone to ring, for your voice, your key in the door.

Bits and bobs from yesteryear

there is a sickness in you
and it grows
you bear it,
a gentle gun
against splitting skin
even as it breaks bones
you pull it closer, caressing

as you shake and spit
your careful claws
snake across my heaving heart

you curl and cry
to nurse your dissatisfaction
I am, as ever, your willing victim
and even as you crave comfort,
my soft white arms around you
you lift your head
to the soft shell of my ear
to loose a terrible poison there

which works in silence
until nothing is left of me
but a thick dark pool

****

You were a coward, you say
an unbearable booming silence tears across the line
jumps satellite to satellite
until it finds my quiet apartment
my bare white room
my mouth opens to speak
I shiver and shake
tucked in the dark bed, a pillow empty beside me
I imagine your slender hands
a hank of black hair, nearly blue, caught in a ripping wind
under a white winter sun
we huddled in the car, it's throaty rumble
bringing soon the miracle of rushing warmth

I would kill you if I could
despite your goodness
and explosive smile

A Forgotten Letter

The heart is dessicated, pressed flat between the pages of a textbook. It's the memory of a heart, preserved for posterity at the height of its vibrant colors. I felt the color begin to fade, the stems began to droop and for the sake of who'll come next I plucked it carefully and folded it between those blind pages.

Months pass in careful silence; I return to the heart, finger it's whisper thinness. Occasionally, I bring it to my mouth, warm it with blushing breath. It is a letter, folded and forgotten from last year's lover.

Without You

My stomach aches, I lie down on the white-clad bed. Here, loneliness develops form, a shape previously unknown. I read signs and signals in the sun, the burning green grass. This is the same room where you grasped my arm, wondering at the scent of chamomile and ylang-ylang. Your laugh skipped silver around this spare room; it's echoing still. I would wrench even your name from here if I could.

I imagine you carefully packing your bag for the walk to work, how the bright winter wind pulls your scarf and you nervously tuck it beneath your lapels again. I see you coming home alone, how you search your pockets for the keys, how the crack of the door opening sounds in the empty apartment. You pour the single glass of wine, curl up on the worn sofa.

It has fallen dark, and I wait and wait to sleep, to slip away from this hour and the one before.

With You

There was a worn wooden floor, tiny sunlit yellow rooms. There were the echoes of laughter clinging to the cobwebs. A tomato plant, maybe basil. There were lost glasses, keys, the novel under the couch cushions. There was a threadbare cotton coverlet, halfway off the bed, your tousled hair. A glass of wine, left out all night. And there was you, always, when I slipped into the side of the bed that's cold.

Time Circling Back

It has been proven by minds much finer than mine that time is, in fact, linear. However, I am allowed to hope it is not, but it is as the Toltec imagined - circular.

I am not headed towards another day of sunshine wearing thin over long hours. I am not to fall asleep tonight in another of a long series of whispering linens, but instead am bounding ceaselessly towards your ripe voice skipping across my bare shoulder.

Not away, you see, I'm returning to your desperate hands clasped across my back, your warm sleeping form beside me. I will once again find myself in the crossfire of gently lobbed words so like watered silk, curl beneath a flickering clock spelling out the hours until you find me in the dark.

Soon time will circle back on itself and you'll find me. Find me again.

A Feast at the End of the World

Pour le premier homme

What madness comes to those who fall too long towards the horizon? I learned quickly to stop fighting the rushing water, realized I had slipped too far into a biting undertow to ever see the surface again. It was a shock then, to wake beside you, your laughter picking out the sun from the sky.

You smile, I recoil; this dream had better last, or start to fade soon.

You lift the slice of green dappled pear to your lips and your eyes widen at the burst of juicy sweetness.

"I have made this, here, it's for you."

It has been a long, dry time and I am grateful for your generous hands. I taste a tiny morsel of what you've laid out; I blanch and turn, it's too sweet after such a long hunger. Give me water, not sweet wine. I'll die of privation even in the land of milk and honey, retching in the sand. But you laugh, and pile my arms with fruits too strange too name. I blink, and am wreathed in a bower of berry. I mouth my small words of thanks, but you still the sound with your hands. And so I fall prey to your sugared sweets. You wipe honey and liquor from my chin with gentle fingers.

"A feast at the end of the world" you whisper and lean closer.

How you have found me here, at the end of the world, I cannot think to ask. I hoped only for silence, for distance.

I lean in and your lips meet mine, but you turn your face. In an instant I think to grasp the falling fruits, and I am alone and I am beneath the surface of the water.

The Price of Pleasure

It's late. The light skips yellow across the wood floor and catches on my fingers, my bare feet. For the past hour, the window has been nothing but a dark mirror, but as I watch, the night splits down the middle to admit headlights. A car drives slowly by and realize I have been waiting breathlessly for it to stop.

I fold one leg beneath the other and sit, still and quiet. You spelled it out so clearly, I am A and you are B and the path was too dark between the two. I listened and waited and you did not answer. I told you it was foolish, but I am not a fool and the line fell silent between us. That night I dreamt of your voice.

This is the price of pleasure. Now I have silence, the comfort of clean linens and a wool sweater. Because I can, I walk outside and I do not think of you.

What Now?

I skip forward in time without realizing it. I find a day or two has gone by only because I see myself in different clothes when I look in the mirror.

I have learned to sleep many more hours a day but cannot yet figure out how to stop dreaming.

I'm bad at this.

"Happiness" - Grant Lee Buffalo

This Isn't a Key

Before we met I said "never, no never again" but you built a fantasy out of a darkened cloakroom and a wide-open window. You held a key, but leaned against the door, whispered sweet wild things, your ear against the echoing wood. "I'm on the other side; is the key in your hand?"

You're not sure how to use it, why would you be? I flatten my hand against the door, so close if I lean in I can feel the warmth of your sweet face.

"Open the door, open the door."

I can't tell but I think you shook your head. I heard you whisper, "this isn't a key" before you walked away. I heard metal on the floor.

Late Night Notes

This doesn't work out? I'm moving away, under the sea.
Going to be a nanny to a school of clever fish.
I'd skip out to the stars,
write down their sputtering silences.
I'll dig and dig
until I can warm myself with the molten core of the earth.
This doesn't work
and I'm damned to start to lose myself
the wind will blow one day
and a little bit of me will be gone
the next, a little more
until I'm gone altogether.
I'll live in a tree house,
learn the language of growing green things,
never speak again so that any man can hear.
I'll billow and fly away like a sail, a kite
into a blue blank sky
and cover myself in clouds
and scream lightning and thunder.
I'll become transparent,
people will see through me
I'll moonlight as a double-paned glass door.
I think I'll be an apple
my skin will toughen
and I'll rot away in an orchard
somewhere in Maine.
Maybe I'll slip inside the sun
and see what exactly a nuclear furnace is,
what colors burn brightest.

Or maybe, what's truest is;
this is the last time I think I can bear this.
After this, it's only me,
a wool sweater, a clever conversation,
lust and lovely linens
but nothing, ever again, approaching love.
I'll turn inward like a broken compass
and write and read and
slowly become Emily Dickinson.
It was all laid out long, long ago.
I'll wear black, instead, so people can tell us apart.

Say No, Say Yes

They tell me a plane is just the ticket, that silence is best kept. That I should say nothing to you, wait and if you come back on your own, then it's true. No, I should sit outside your door. Yes, while you sleep I should cover from your doorstep to where you're going with poetry, with your name and mine, entwined. That you should find me, charcoal in hand, in the middle of the night, outside your window. Or maybe say nothing, tell you it's okay, that I know nothing and everything can happen from this moment on. That whatever's next will break us down or apart, or into pieces so small we'll never be able to find them all. I make a fool of myself; I'm unsure. You'd laugh, but it's true, you turn a small part of me inside out, make me reconsider the cool silences between last night and this one. I imagine I can close my eyes, smell your hair, the points of your fingers dancing warm on mine. Neither of us need love, neither of us think this is wise. From two people who're known for being pragmatic realists it's a dangerous propostion. Maybe we should turn away, smother a flustering flame in sand and sky. Maybe I should stop imagining your smile coming easy, stop running your name over my tongue like a sweet. This is all possibility, you know?

What matters, here? Really? That if you were here I'd have long ago laughed when you grew wild and afraid, kissed your eyes, held my hand against your runaway heart until you were calm and sure. If this is distance that made you fall towards the horizon and distance alone, know this - I will unravel every mile between us. It means nothing to me. Haven't you figured it out by now? It's all possibility. And you, it's you.

Desire.

What is this fire?

In Warmth and Hunger

I tuck my legs beneath me, wrap myself in warmth and hunger. I rest my head on the arm of the loveseat; my eyes focus and refocus on your name, your face. Your uncertain smile begins to flicker and finally fade. My hands grow heavy over time. I am used to the bright hiccup of your laugh but now somehow manage to hear the quicksilver slide of one disobedient tear slip and fall into the rough upholstery. The signs are no longer clear, I search for intent. Not long ago you whispered poetry across the ocean until I writhed with longing for your voice. Did I imagine my throat sore from words unsaid? Do you grow tired, dropping your head to a plastic pillow, your monitor glaring blankly down?

I spun silver and green for you, promises whipped into a froth and a skipping giggle. In the rushing blush of want and imagination I found you. I found you. Now let me hear your answer, if it's your nervous call or a dark and hollow no, I can bear it. All but silence, all but this, whatever the price of pleasure, I'll pay and count myself lucky.

"Are you alright? I wish you'd give me a little clue.
Is there something that you want to say? 'Cause you took off without a word.
Are you alright, you flew away like a little bird.
Is there anything I can do? 'Cause I need to hear from you."
- Lucinda Williams

Le Premier Homme

J'attendrai, il me démêlerai me. Les étoiles chuchotent son nom.

I Bear the Hard News

I bear the hard news,
the shaking trees
unfurling darkly across a winter-whitened sky.

I rock back and forth for only a moment,
my eyes turning back, far back
to memories that play like a sick reel-to-reel.

Good thing now, my bones are plated in steel,
my gut, mesh and wire,
my feet are bare and blue.

I bear the hard news,
and I bear it alone
and even the stars whisper your name.

I am frantic, searching,
my hair unwashed and falling,
lank and dark across my shoulder.

I eat stones, I taste iron,
resting my head on concrete
my hands ragged and torn.

I bear the hard news,
and the world begins to buzz
and finally to split.

Sonata Pathétique

I am always a disappointment, I'm afraid. I speak clearly of beautiful people, eyes flashing across dinner tables and concert halls. I am not even the same species, sleeves too short, skin too blemished. Not even my sorrows are original, copied from my betters. There will never be a man who gasps to see me in cobalt silk, skin like cream and bisque. Eyes will always slide over me, judging correctly what I have to offer and oh, it always falls short. How I laugh loudest, never last, cheap pantyhose unraveling beneath stapled hems.

"You are nothing; you have nothing."

You Number the Stars

You number the stars, find secrets in science
and silence.
You turned and climbed,
whispered foreign phrases.

"I outran grief;
I graphed here, the points of loss.
Do you see, now,
how I could not fail?"

You kneel to the ground,
laughing, wanting,
reciting the names of the gods,
translating the geometry of want
and the physics of loss.

Did I wait too late,
your gently burning heart
skipping like a turning record?

Fields Lie Fallow

Fields lie fallow;
birds wheel wildly in a blankly burning sky.
There is a dreadful waiting,
the sigh before the wailing cry.
the silent hiss of an ill-turned radio.
What next? I can only beg.
The crackling bark of lightning,
the terrible will of the fog.

I collapse and fold myself beneath myself,
hands over my head,
as freezing rain counts off:
This is not a drill.
This is not a drill.

The Shivering Moon

Since we've met, it seems the stars have left the sky. I could pull the dense blanket of night around my shoulders and there hardly be a murmur to protest. The moon is as bright as an eye, a shiny dime leaching into silvery white, sneaking past and scattering shards across my bed and my sleeping face.

You laugh upon hearing this, insist there are too many stars to name still whispering brightly toward me. I leave you and stand under a blank, dark sky and wonder if you, too, see the shivering moon turning alone.

The Beacon

For CE

It is the bare, flashing beacon, tremulously alight, whispering white into a meaningless face of a dark sky. Your voice, your nervous laugh, at supersonic speeds shimmies across my ear and smiling face. Across my shaking hands and winds its way in, in towards the white guardians of my slipping lungs. Into a dark miasma of pulsing want, into a heart overburdened by want. I feel your cool fingers grab my arm, pull it towards you. Closer, closer the heaving furnace of your loneliness pulls me. I shiver and burn, slide next to you, as you are broken, aching. My hands find their way. After all, this, at least, is familiar territory. You vomit sand, my searching hands find the sucking jointed thing of metal. It does not come without a fight, but what else do I have energy for? And the beacon winks, blinks out, and does not again burst white.

Find Me

I'm tired, I turn away from a flashing yellow sun, pulling myself down low in a blanket of down. Over my eyes, in a blank cocoon of sleep. My hair has grown long and winds around my neck. I wake again and again. The night and day seem to bleed together, I'm no longer sure when I dream of you and when longing for you seeps from my pores, soaks the bed. My voice has grown rasping and I taste metal. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I want only clean linen and silence. Though it hasn't happened yet, I've heard it should start to fade, I should no longer wake in a small salty sea. Last night, or the night before, my heart fluttering like a wild bird, I breathed your name in and out, the shallow shudder tearing away at my throat. I curl down deep, a nautilus without a shell. I'd bury myself here and let dust and sorrow bury me until I could only be unearthed as an archaeological find.

Find me. Find me, please.