Reckonings
Let it start
with the streetlamp at night
and the leaning against it
and the push of bodies, so certain,
that uncertain thoughts can not betray
these bodies, so in focus,
from the heat of you.
Let it start there, and summon a
the smells.
Invoke pungent sweat
from dancing hard
to erase and embrace everything
Thick in smoke and cologne,
an opulent brew —
and the moment is stretched out.
But let it not stretch too long,
for the bodies are eager.
Where to go? Do we care?
How many words
for heat and madness?
Let it be tables and floors
and rooftops and subways
Let us push off the dawn,
though it will push back.
And that first morning
will be catalogued
into many mornings.
Clothes thicken and soon
Other people, jobs,
relocations —
mandates and precisions.
Let it be a time neither then
nor now, and let it end
by a streetlamp at night.
Move towards the glow
from other pages,
inhale through years.
Yesterdays crumble, tomorrows curve.
Let it be, a prayer.
Breathe Louder into Silence
She insisted on living alone
unable to breathe without labor
attached to oxygen and feeding tubes
unable to walk without trembling
coughing the thick mucus in her hardened
lungs that turned against her
twice: first her lungs, then the donor’s lungs
and, gasping for air, she insisted on living
alone —
after drunken revelries, after work despite
the orders of doctors and common sense —
as a stagehand or playing with a band.
Singing, croaking, shouting, enraged
with lungs that belonged to a quiet woman,
who was patient, loved chocolate, and now, oddly,
my friend cursed a little less, licked chocolate,
but couldn’t chew — there was no appetite,
only startling emaciation of the cheeks, legs, arms.
And she insisted on living alone —
despite her parents pleas for hospice,
offers of their own sterile care,
and, yes, she was lonely; she said so;
I traveled for a dreamlike visit
We watched The Matrix, Rushmore, Behind the Music,
pontificating about alternate realities, childhood dreams
and the virtues of Henry Rollins.
She cursed cheerfully, coughing her subterranean
cough – and I flew back to LA, the final goodbye
except for a belabored phone call when she told me
the miracle.
Her greatest love returned.
That breakup was ugly, fueling her stubborn rage to live.
The woman had left her for a simple man,
leaving her with: foreign lungs, half-written songs,
false breath — and she insisted on living alone
— until the lover returned with knit sweaters, tears, caresses,
of mourning and elation, caresses of absolution and
of what could have been, and she heaved, asphyxiated,
gasping in those last caresses, yielding in her own bed,
her lover’s arms, no more gasping.
