next thing i know i’m looking
for my coat in a bar
all my friends are gone and
i don’t know why i’m here in the
first place.

There's a firmness, a near violence, with which you chop vegetables, at odds

with your nature, but maybe I'm deluding myself. Is that my head on the

block and are you a modern day Madame Defarge transmitting

secret signals to forces out to usurp me?

Wandering around Maplewood Village,
past the ice cream shop
where over forty years ago we wore
pink uniforms and developed scooping forearms,
you ask me if
I will ever settle down.

brutal morning will not answer itself:
hard green lemons
a casket of carnations
misfortune and her tease
my seed once nestled in utero

Once we ran out of gas. You tested fate and me. What equation
comprised of reconciliation yields tensile? I went for a run.

We spoke on the phone for hours, but distance still compiled day after day.
I was unfaithful — launching betrayal like a missile. I went for a run.

Decades and brief visits pass as yearbooks.
In a drawer under sweaters, the pieces are all there
Repaired and stored, the taped seams curl ochre.

let it echo against tender flesh
let the ink sink into tissue see:

my brain tattoos
itself on itself

Do you want to munch popcorn? He asks
I decline
The movie plays in balletic motions
There’s a man on screen who eats too many
words and swords.

I followed you here but it’s my city now
I think you’re still here but I can’t feel you so
you’re as good as dead
You’re as good as gone

everyone is here for fun, some by the pill and others
from the bottle. There’s a black dog hanging
around looking for attention, a young woman asks me
if I can keep an eye on her drink: trusting me, sensing
no evil.

We trekked during days and at time during night, guided be beacons of pale aurora light, rivers and curtain, sheets without end we wondered if this is how all rainbows end. Each morning we rose and glanced to the east, and wondered if polar bears danced when we sleep.

A lot of the bees escaped my mouth,
hoverering in a cloud over my hair.
Then they grabbed words I was thinking
in their sticky legs, random words like
taffeta, prawns, boneyard

A few haunts still standing
Alleys of unseemly intent
Walking on 8th Street
Brownstones with rustic, rusty fire escapes
Ceramic tiles announce house numbers with style
Façades of inexhaustible detail
I could walk forever

the water, always, the water, flowing / to nowhere, really, no lake, / the pointless stream / conscious of nothing but its own movement, / wearing my edges civil / bit by interminable bit, / uncalculated and always so near

A clatter of throaty utterances splits the silence. I cock my head like a bird listening for a worm. The utterances are so numerous, distinct words are garbled. Still, they seem restless, apprehensive, troubled.

Minimalist is
any item I see and dislike. Green
is Art Deco. Looking half forward
to the upscaled, temporarily
bruised illusioned face followed by looking
fully downward at five hundred
and fifty dollars.

I worry that eventually
the thought of leaving
won’t make you sad enough
to stay and you say
fear is just love
facing the wrong direction

Zealous scraps leftover in refrigerators.

The past balls up: dirty clothes
forgotten in a sold house.

Still, generally, people annoy me
But I’m more empathetic than you
And I’m getting better about outbursts
Though, still I’ll honk at anyone railing down the freeway
Going 90 or above

You needed a woman to tell you that?
I wonder,
willing her eyes up from the tablecloth,
opening my mouth to speak.