the second time

there was a disaster
that dropped on the plain and
you weren't in it though you
felt it from far away the
aftershock
which disable your fantasies
in the end

flickering like a memory
or the face recalling it
the fact recalling itself
(his face graces my book where
it belongs where i belong under
a pillow a vantage point of
the hunted left in a sour mood
that night, everynight)
exactly the same, i remember
how it all repeated itself
exactly the same

hoping you would send me one
fragment of you

the cart hit the cat it
wavered like me

i want both the thing and
its opposite
i want both the thing
and its enemy
enmity

the entity
the enema
the man in a beret

 

heart failure

dream that fades gradually as
your eyes uselessly open upon
the chair he is elegant and immobile
you remember what it was before
jiggling and shaking
elegance replaces faith
faith replaces beauty
stiff upper lip of life kissing
for the first time now barely
remembered trivial as death
common as death
profound as death
fuck it anyway
everything must go

 

neither you nor i

the lack this replaces like gas
spitting up hope while splitting hairs
could starve on your face
the way it sticks needles in
draining my resolve

too weak to sit up lie under the
curtains the gas thickens fingers already
deceased the rest twitching about
aimlessly (oh yes!)

never let yourself be rejected twice by
the same person too humiliating
though attracted to grovelling
like rain to shovel to the impossible
like math to meat

cultivating its opposite
as if all lines converged on a particular face
one drink away from honesty,
terror that i can't control

inertia that had to be overcome
just to (be) sit(ting) here
which i sometimes get sick of
neither talking nor surgery

each time i reach backwards
there you are:
spitting stones, pick up each
caress before discarding it
knowing i got the best of you
greedy
for your tiny feet
flies without wings
because i was released from prison early?
or the shock of birth

still learning:
how to come clean
how to wake up
how to stand up
how to wash myself

how to fit in

a