Even the wind outside the double panes ruffles me.
I want to hit something or kiss you.
This will not hurt, but it could be a slow-burning barn. Filled with owls.
We were a far away building once, in a painting by Mark Rothko.
Do you get it?
Of course you do.
its vast sides turned against one another
in an architecture of long angles and eaves
dark shadows and leafed-in Sundays
where the neighborhood slowly awakens
to owl sounds and church bells breaking in
softly on a million tiny sleeps
full of dreams written down with a pencil
the dark lines little stove pipes pointing
at the dying sky you can see from the roof
where ideas like language and belief
were tossed around easily – things I actually
would love to catch but just can’t seem to see
in the fading light of the alley that reflects only
night in the broken stained glass of windows
on their ancient yet visible hinges
like fingers with lips and clothing in piles
that we land in only every few nights
together alone with this secret so close
to an outer wall crowned with glass shards
some rotted out but others still sharp like bad fins
in the good dream I keep trying to have,
you kissed me.
]]>Pavement and its strangers stretching
far around, an ocean of irrelevant eyes
that finally allowed us each
to look, to really see the other.
Thank you for talking me down.
Thank you for coming to me.
A thousand dreams later: You must
stop saying these things to me,
each day a weight I wake to shed.
I carry none with me but one:
If you only look for bits of it
you can find a kind of happiness…
so that by night I’m looking up again
for the bite and shine, some way
to assemble the terrible light as it circles
again too near, so very close to you.
Bebong & Rocky are thrown off by daylight savings. Falling back is always a celebration, a night of staying up to see the time change: wine, biscuits, popcorn, beer, cookies and maybe a rash phone call or two by Bebong…
The first morning of normal light is rather blurry. They decide to prolong the party.
Looks like a new day, Rock. Bebong jumping-jacks through the kitchen, goes straight for the couch. He’s got his warm-ups on.
Rocky smiles with all his teeth, drinks the last of his water from the bowl. He’s always ready to go out in his full fur coat.
A tiny rain about to begin. Church bells and the sudden train.
Having forgone raincoats, Bebong & Rocky reconnoiter the damp neighborhood. Bebong jogs for one block. These are excellent shoes, he tells Rocky, who’s very much into the ivy lining the sidewalk in front of the smallest house in the town, where someone’s typing a long and half-meant letter.
Bebong & Rocky stop at the little house with ivy. A recliner on the front porch, dead hanging plants, Christmas lights, a wilted grocery bag on the doormat.
Night comes and a clearing. No real rain, after all. Not really.
And no more typewriter. No light from the little house except now the tiny Christmas lights. Blinking in no real pattern. So much silence. Orion. Bebong pulls Rocky away.
That’s enough, he says tenderly. That’s enough.
]]>the little one orange and yellow and red
the big one bone-brown and tired
silence grows in the trees
little cowboy kicks a boot at the air
says are you angry Ivan
a walker swishes past in her zippers
dogs call out unnamable needs
and the invisible stars rising
falling
Pins on the eaves of the stone church. (You are tiny in your forgiveness.) A row of teeth on a standpipe, or a nice low ledge.
Don’t stay here – not, go away forever.
Regret, at Night
A falling leaf casts a shadow that looks, for a moment, like something running away from me.
4th of July
“Me & Steve & Dragon rode down to Red Hook to see if we could get into my old apartment… which we could.”
Bad Kids
They sneak home at 8:30 a.m., smiling. Sheepish sheep of the afternoon high.
They laugh quietly, tap on the windows.
There are three of them, one more than there should be.
Phenomenon
Any time is strange but this one. The wind you cannot see.
You can’t imagine August 2008. Try. You can’t.
Receive a watch as a gift, and see what happens.
]]>