It would be impossible to recall how many times I have stumbled, laughing into the lap of the night I am not short-circuiting, someone just forgot to press record (again) as another hour is sacrificed to the darkness Do we drink to vanquish fear and reclaim the night? (there might just be nothing else to do in this sad city) My personal demons find me at twilight -- I expect them and surrender my evening to the itch, saying "I'm out of regret -- it's all gone stale since yesterday. Let's pick up some more" and off we fly to tomorrow. Aluminum love is tangible and carries me through the streets This city has two faces -- night is veiled and smirking, only suggesting any mystery remains for me to solve.

How odd, to see a prenoon sun absent a hangover's wincing trepidation (I must be growing) is day a reflection of the darkness it follows? if so this morning is tinged with apologies. I cannot pretend to be a red cup in the gutter innocent of every crime but existence - each day spent in this town damns me, but it is peaceful here on these unfamiliar paths Can I stay a while? I pace themed streets so (at the sight of red brick) the taste and scent of this place, like a slap, will stop me dead in recollection This city has two faces -- day smiles at my attempted memorization (as if every bird and tree can't tell that night is my only anticipation)

Biblical allegory from the mouth of an atheist: Snake, I have no interest in your soul, trembling and spiteful of a world that could never understand your depths (or so you whine from lofty heights) I have no interest in your love - words are cheap and ours especially are tarnished with handling And your body? I don't know it well enough to imagine I need it What knowledge, then, is left to seek? Your esteem - treat me as your equal and I am yours, forever. Intelligent creature, tell me this: would I be so invested had I not been so ignored? The innocent has fallen for your ruse - your talent has somehow turned something offered into something sought.

Each day falls away - a dry leaf indistinguishable, autumnal Here is my rake, here is my pile but I have no love for a child's leisure: hiding under lifeless hands that crack and crumble when clasped There is no one to hear, but I am shouting - here is myself, here is my glass fill one and the other empties (fill one and the other breaks) Pathetic, pathetic - what a pity, that I am made of wax and bound to my unhappiness Did I yell aloud? Why, no - paraffin lips cannot part to speak, curse, kiss (though how I long to do all three) no, I am mute - a stoic statue watching the progress of one more plunging leaf

This admirable delusion: love You speak of it between sips and sighs, while I nod along like a happy fish -- gulp, gulp, gulp It must be love! Why else would my head buzz and cheeks flush? (and since you love me, I know you see:) I am too sensitive for your five o'clock shadow or the sand underfoot and it hurts me to imagine (the feel of one long line of powder, as if I were you dollar bill) kissing you-- you leave me raw for days. Callous allergen! no amount of liquid poured can drown your itch You drift in and out of focus. How fitting! a ghostly dance for my spectral love (and it must be love, for who but a lover would treat me so badly)

Two hundred miles, and you want me for a pet, a hand, a mouth to be your passenger and bedmate (and though I dare to dream of willing subservience) your words cannot entice me to obey-- please, don't leave me with this memory: the tone of your voice and that hungry look, "kiss me." Take it with you-- it only hurts with re- collection (I have too many just like it). You're pleading "Come home," as if I'm not home already-- in these moments I can almost forget why I fight your magnetism; it was on the tip of my tongue until you distracted me with a smile.

"Well, I'm sober now," I said and that was it. Goodbye? I made a mistake, thinking of you as something more; what you are, baby, is a body; your eyes watch me watch you, the scrutiny of a sculptor Oh sweet presumption! To think of myself as anything other than stretched canvas Sex, the way we paint our discontent and I can find no better brush than your fingertip We belong in a museum, so everyone can come and see the mess I've made

Seeking warmth- my hand in your pocket, my eyes closed to our foolishness We wander the snow-bound streets. Am I so blind? Stumbling in the chill of the wind You pay no attention to snow-covered tracks. Fragile snowflakes form one scorned tempest: I forge new paths with each glance your way Wallowing, floundering in a world of my own creation Snow drifts, snow banks, you

You asked me to write you poetry Can't you see? I recite verse every hour with my eyes and hands, iambs of joy that comes so easily in your presence (and although you are away) no duplication with ink can mean more than our communion. Take each kiss, instead, as penned line of love. A poem? I would rather give my vision, that you might know the way I see you; I have no skill with rhyme, but one moment will sing you odes and sonnets more meaningful than words.

18 April, 2008 this land of glass and stone captures warmth (between the storefronts of a thousand investments and hopes) where three, four, five pairs of hands are one unit familiar. This could be ours. Small ears and sticky lips, our heat caught and reflected timelessly (and oh so selfishly, in an era where a man lone and afraid is a thing distasteful) Land of hypocrisy, its mask this bustling and wholesome square (someday, someday, our endless whisper) We will be too distracted by a New Life to notice.

11 January, 2008 If I could direct the path my dreams take (the simplicity of turning a white page) of capture the patterns my exhalations make, the result would be an hour lost in the memory of the way your skin tastes (in the dark of a warm room) the small quiet of the journey of your hands, always, the slow moments filed with your eyes, closed, the purposeful movement your dreaming orders and the ardor and Anticipation of a first kiss Yet, I see only the west the fervent grabbing the sun makes, sinking, slicing beams through grey clouds towards the paradise of the south (a thousand lines of light yearning towards last attempts at blue) in the gathering dark.

06 January, 2008 It is springtime where you are, and to my mind your breath is the warmest breeze (your eyes the only stars I care to see and your smile, the sun) that warms with each steady moment And yet, this cold I feel (this winter) is not the bitter tang of air through bare branches as I walk, or sit quietly with a lit cigarette. Nothing is quiet, outdoors, where my smoke and breath spiral to mix with the grey sky. Winter is not a dead thing. Death, instead, is the silence of a room where I once had a thousand nights of dreamless sleep, a cool sheet, an empty pillow where your head once lay. Days of cold, and then This freak summer that streams in from the south. Honest emotion and truth are unfamiliar feelings on my tongue (and the sun seems a symbol of the new certainty I embrace)

the absence of a small flame has turned the world to water- we rock (hand to chin to hair to hand) and the breeze, the current pulls at our limbs. My thoughts cling like silt and a small place screams with anxiety- I will not feed it. The sun I used for a blanket, wrapped its warmth around me and focused on Anything Else (the smell of the wind in your throat) has set too soon and I cannot break the surface of this ocean, addiction.

04 April, 2008 "Vertebrae," he called it and left it there for me to contemplate as I wore your mark on my breast and stood and stared, hiding from the sun. I have too many thoughts for you and you have none except for how the blossoms fall like false rain on your lap. Bronze in a garden or petals in hair cannot calm jealousy. Look! I am yours but no amount of smoke can bribe you to be mine You are Your Own (sculpture, artist, and meadow)

03 April, 2008 Rather than a stone wall those thousand pebbles placement, precision and the illusion of comfort that mortar and vines promise a thousand pebbles clog the drain and my hands are clean. Dirt streaks my face, the walls and a silt-loam reflection follows me through the halls, but my nail beds would gleam in the sun had the rain not followed me home. I am not strong enough for boulders. Those pebbles would have done me in had I not a friend to help me Call me a counterfeit! rub your dirt on my palms I will still have the whites of my eyes and water to wash today away

17 September, 2007 The purity of solid-colored skies mock the stripes of evening, casting shame on the way my blood pulses (unevenly) in thin veins. Where I sit, alone camels glide, journey in the snapping mist (the smoke of their breath the fog from the rolling dunes) distantly the sky stretches over and within me, the stillness spiteful of personal deserts. I am taut (and I have barely learned to welcome the embrace) my skin, the brittle slices, a thousand shards of moisture from shallow pores. I spit, the god of another bitter oasis More miracles for my collection.

There exists, somewhere hidden in the hard sounds your hands convey (idolatry in dilating pressure) a concrete sense (the brick wall life hurtles toward) of security Pause holds no sway in the dialect of our love (syllables unpronounced by clumsy southern tongues) Crimson sunsets over a charlatan paradise go unnoticed but for (the stirring air on a solitary face) your presence I am not sure how I feel about this. I had the urge to play with hard sounds and strong words today. I do not know if anyone will be able to hear a difference but me.

4 August 2007/24 August 2007/9 September 2007 Alexander, as your face seems molded by an artist's palm (your eyes created to lower, coyly against all unworthy targets) how privileged I feel to hold the softness of your hand (to taste the salt of your lip after sea air has utterly tousled our quiet words) I imagine I feel Right beside you (though I have been wrong before) carrying your charms (and memories therein, a thousand separate strands of time) as talisman against the screaming wilds of the great unknown of the present

28 July 2007 Thirty years from now, when I am settled in my own feelings of Importance and Purpose (or I have lost them altogether) I might look back and say "Summer of 2007, when I signed my name in the corner of books of poetry, philosophy (and wondered if my children would ever see the script as childish) read and digested Rand, was Unsatisfied, moved on to Nietzsche, drank, smoked, and worked in a Laundromat for low pay and no respect, grew wary at new boys, succumbed to familiar faces, envied the way girls looked from across the room, spent money and did not contemplate The Future, ran around like a mad woman, barely slept, searched for Meaning I was eighteen, decent health, cramped handwriting and emotional range, living for myself through a glass of vodka and a ballpoint pen" The best summer of my life? The only sure thing right now is that I cannot find a better term for retrospection in the present tense than "pathetic."

26 July 2007 A car, a car A Chevy (black ink and just as mutable) sits revs its engine in the corner of my mind Hello and a comma, and a pause and a sideways glance at you The light hits your eyes (sparks) in a not-quite-right way, a Hello and a nod, It's Fine Hello in a way, that way as if we never said goodbye.