the haunting.

the pillows are flat and stained and are no comfort today.
last night, i saw your arms, freckle-flecked and willow-wristed,
spun around waists, eyes aloof and denim-washed blue nothings,
and i choked on a history of arms too similar
and oracles emanating the same cool palette
and the same fidgeting strangeness and i had to ask,
why do i jump into bed with falsehoods
and let them strip me bare to nothing,
a pile of cold bones, colder trust?

i pick up yesterday's dress off the carpet,
it was so pretty before it touched the floor
and i find that cloth is hollow, like forever,
and without bodies to fill it it's a flimsy rag
and it's just garbage
i'm so sick of garbage
i have too much in common with piles of trash and morning-after dresses
to ever feel worthy of a
throne, or a hanger,
or a body that doesn't exult in another's, soft snow mountain explorer,
when i shut my eyes or turn to river cabins isolated.


i'm placeholder for the fantastic.


in the end, i'll have no name
i'll just be a former distraction
so why not start now.


i wish our mouths could touch without smudging
but i'm still waiting for you to whisper
that i'm nothing.

choo.

the train is cold today. and where are you? i'm sitting in a corner seat, pudgy-nosed window-smudging to get a view of the advertisement-smattered dark. people hurry in and out of doors, looking down, concrete floors, missteps, nothing to see here, move along. i have a backpack. i pretend its your baby and hold it with respect and indifference. the end of the line isn't really the end, and it'll take more than a loudspeaker to make me move, all olive akimbo arms and nothing better to do.

so i look around.

too many people, blank faces on interchangeable stick figures, or solid american frames with pert piggy faces. i like to stare and be stared at. do they know more about me than i do? maybe. i look around. i wonder who loves. i wonder who has a great love, i wonder who had one, i wonder who never has. what is at home? fold-out trays and crinkled napkins and rabbit-eared football, cacophonous? or pretty thing, ironing, unhappy? no, i shouldn't doubt them all. maybe one, maybe two go home to eternity and wrap themselves up in it and sleep through the night zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs so soft and fingers softer, lillies resting and tracing upper lips, languid blues. i hope so. i know what i've got ain't common, but thank god its mine. i'll keep it.

i squint. its a sunday on the subway, but i'll sit eyeless in neutrality and pass no judgement. being kind is the only thing that matters in the end anyway. i read a book.

talk how i think.

for my new friend, who i think would get along with leonard cohen and certainly gets along with me.

make the world happy inside your head
i promise outside, you've got friends
we have to crack to begin again
taste the light the leaks inside our brains
will you walk with me
in the purity of the breaking?

the bridges buckle under a moon so full
and we can almost taste the bay
it's just a chilled yesterday soup
to drink it might just make us brave
i'll hold your hand
if you just stay

and i'll mold your purpose out of clay.

pas bien.

i am scared when i lay next to you

that when my lids loosen, and i struggle to wakefullness with eyes untrapped

i will see you see me

for me

and you will realize

that fortune cookie was wrong---

i'm not someone special

and

i didn't deserve flowers.