for you.

the floor knows best
and that
you are better than the sum
than the least
than the worst of
your parts -
the floor knows best
and you know
better than to doubt
or bereave
or deny
any bit of your
self.

better

the music he loves
the music and the way
it inhabits fingers
throat
and
mind.
he listens (do you understand?)
he listens and then becomes
a gramophone, a font of words a
mouth overflowing with
the drool of a man
long starved and seated
at a feast long prepared
for him
alone.

comfort

sleep strangely
sleep arms thrown across
the softness of the pillow
and know
with all certainty
with all timidity that i do the same
curled and clinging to
my own set of feathers
scented by your will
and my own persistent need.

beloved

run and i will follow
i whisper and i know
soon and very soon
there will be time
and a place in which
you will know me and believe in
my fingers, hands, legs, mouth,
and waiting lap -
run to me and i will wait
all warmth and the loss of
fear.

broadly bent

standing ready to receive
the ever strangled
curl of fingers -
how the mouth hungers before me;
so far from its property, so near
to my need.
i howl in the mind, i burn in the body,
i ring in the ears: a plague
a refuge, a record, a
blind and striving
hope.

trace

there are no pictures.
evidence is stacked in my closet
of the days spent crafting
perfect words and an
imperfect hope.
there are no pictures.
a butterfly sits on my right shoulder
reminding me of what i always knew -
that you were not made to stay,
only to alight for a brief space
before returning to the sky and
your self.
there are no pictures,
but there is an impression,
and your blood on the bottom
of my shoes.

clean escape

here i sit, dizzy, again,
only this time this night
will end with sleep
that swells and slips between my legs,
buoyed by those who replaced you
and gave what you could not.
yes i still have words for you,
but my love, my love, my love
is still within me and though wasted
it is still
my own to refurbish, yet again
and spend more wisely for the lessons
your mistakes have
taught.

necessary concessions

most people only fight like hell
for heaven, and not the other way
around.
i used my teeth and well heeled feet
and words and ever changing moods,
but darling there was only ever
one of you who never needed
me.
so i'll walk away, and you'll walk away,
and we'll call it a draw,
and the fight will end, though i only
ever fought it
for myself.

newark

i looked to the west
and believed there to be love
and a bed waiting for my return.
in my error, i take little shame.
grey new light leaks through the knowledge that,
to the east,
there is a mind that yearns for me,
turning a contingency plan
to a psalm.

charlie

old men knew me for what i was
just as children know the truth
in fairytales;
a promise and a hope
and beauty to be
had if only you would
take it.

routine

shockingly,
or just as i knew it would,
washing laundry still feels the same.
folding, though, that will be the
difficult bit -
smelling my own detergent on fabric that has
for five months
endured the dust of your
home.

impression

there is an unimpressive field in tulsa
in which we stood
after quiet words
and acceptance.
i will remember you as you were
in that moment, in my arms
beneath the moon -
standing whole and alive
and in no danger from
landmines.
i knew to appeal to your logic,
i knew to show you the tire tracks that
led us together,
that led us to the middle of an
unimpressive field
in tulsa.

straight lines

you rest on my shoulder as i rested on your words as i

lay within your bed as you lay beneath my legs

as you taught me to feel the road within

my womb.

once in a while

before the dust has time to settle
i'll be gone i'll be long and lively and lingering
after every bit of me has turned to memory -
and you will be as you were, before, no great
change or cataclysmic conversion of self:
a man unto his own devices and echoing projects
of propulsion.

care

after work there are cigarettes
and the same fourteen songs
on the pop station -
so many thought killers,
so many yellow birds that circle endlessly;
but take my words, and take them with,
and take them for luck.
even if you don't believe
in fortune or being fortunate,
take me, take me,
take me.

the idea lives on

the wheels that roll around
the town the gravel
the ground and the grounding
and the in between
and all the tenses
these will make of your mind
the carousel imagined when
still young and still a dreamer untouched -
it feels and is and continues to be
a lifetime;
you must remember that amdist this, my darling.

we all, we are, we will

when everything you are falls from you
and pools beneath the boards of that last
and greatest stage
there will be something left
my dear i promise you will see it
all the glory
and all the best
of your new beginning