Dinner Date

Friendship carries a savage curl

alone at the feast-ruined table

I hear a vicious whisper: there is,

and ever shall be, nobody else.

Every other soul shall pass,

and only I remain--

then, in the moments after

and decades coming on

I realize: because I killed them

dead to me in my heart;

knowing I would lose them,

I cut them down and unleashed

loneliness upon my busy world.

April 2022

An exploration of insatiable wakefulness

 I don't know why I'm up

or what I'm waiting for,

who I think will save me.

I can sleep.  My bed is there

safe, and soft, and warm,

I'm not an insomniac

and I would just

piss the time away, anyway.

The books are on the shelf,

papers and pens undisturbed,

work unfinished cluttering

the untouched bench.

I don't know why I'm here

sitting at a window

as if I'll miss it--

as if I'll lose myself--

as if I'll let the universe down.

April 2022

event horizon

i imagine stretching out
comically, like a cartoon, like taffy

feet just lines of paint streaking to the singularity--

boy, what would that feel like?

hopefully nothing:

if time does the same thing

maybe my nerves would never fire.

i'd see myself scraping toward a dark threshold

for 80 years, and die of old age, never again

feeling my feet. and even 

those 80 years: were they?

outside my perspective, maybe it was

a millennia, or a nanosecond; they talk about this in movies.

as for me & my mind, i think about this pretty often:

not really black holes, but

other people: how you might be

stretched out like geometry, eyes wide with fright

and it might be year 67 out of 80 for you

even though it all just seems "didn't that happen just

last week?" to me.

or the reverse; i'm fixated on a moment,

some conversation you've by now forgotten,

that one time way back seven years ago

still feeling to me--and me only--like earlier today.

anyway, i'll demure.  speak softly, wait for you

to reveal your own event horizons

because i never know if my yesterdays

were your last years, or seconds ago.

january 2022

sad

I like to be sad.  I cherish the sincerity of it, the privacy & otherness.  Silent grief is a pain I trust; it is a trunk I carry on my travels, filled with memory and longing, filled with the last remnants of loves and voices long since turned to silent dust.  Sorrows are the lost treasures of my fallen empires, the ruins of my forgotten histories.  For me, to grieve is to touch again some lost, bright joy--sometimes the only joy I know.  Grieve, and be alive; do not numbly die.

specific monsters

we are specific monsters

to those we choose, otherwise

charming, magnificent, gracious

human beings, laughing & kind.

or however else we think ourselves;

and when we cast off these thoughts

letting some specific person have us:

the real monster underneath:

then intimacy couples with hate,

for why else would i ever be so cruel

as to let you meet me thus?

we choose our victims carefully

from those we love the most--

here, beloved, now witness me

and i will be a monster to you.

October 2021