but i won't

I wish I were clear-eyed and capable, 

that I didn't feel the need to know where you are. 

I wish I could stop writing love songs, 

quit wasting the paper. 

But your force was like an indelible ink 

that I have to spread thinner and thinner 

until I can barely make out the lines 

that once told a story more complete than we could act out. 

If you ever change your mind, you said...

Germany

In every town, a steepled church
A cabbage farm
A factory
Walls that lean on neighbors
Due to the faulty eyes of bricklayers
Or the settling of time

And closer to the tracks
A dense consort of tiny homes
With tiny yards
And wiry dogs snuffling along the hedgerows

The illustrated stone facades
Of outbuildings long left to rot
Kept company by impatient teenagers
And impetuous girlfriends

Sometimes balconies
Sometimes warmth
But sometimes a large lit box
Where tinkering workers add tires
To another crop of cars
As a fog creeps perilously closer

couldn't be magic

you were someone i so desperately wanted to know
that i meant my keen eyes to fall on for more than one sleight of hand
but you can't know your consequence or cause
can't know that the man who preceded you
took every drop of patience i contained
and poured it out
until it seemed as if i were weeping it
and that was the only virtue i could express

i could only shake off your disappearance with a shrug
could not be crushed under another of Sisyphus' stones-
    patience turned to stone

you might have sawed it into quarters
pulled one from my ear to show
you understood that all i could hear
was my virtue rolling back to me

Aaron

into dreams you go, my sweet
and it's been a time-long death
of words as well as wisdom

my heart can't retract what it spoke
as the muscle of its tongue subsides
and catches in the throat
it's been tough to swallow, this demise

fragments

6)
after a long night's work
the light off the highway
     calling me to church
pardon if i keep on truckin'
roll right into my bed

8)
face it babe, you ache for change
wanna take your clothes off, rearrange
and i catch the shining moment of despair

but give yourself a quarter-turn
and walk right on until you're firm
and let me hang here drunk in disrepair

30)
inspiration strikes at any time
but you just won a lifetime of happiness
no devil involved
no heavy registration
catastrophe's like white after Labor Day
and i am the fashion police

37)
I've had thoughts vanish at a question
          May have led to some end
                Some sufficient answer
Led to fruition
I could be brilliant

I might know you
Like your clothes know you
          They know you better
          They've held on
I might feel every breeze that's hit you
          When I tug at your clothes

I might know you
I might put you on paper
          Pour you into words
And what you read comes out your mouth

If thoughts didn't vanish
          I might know you

42)
smiling because i'm a stranger on the train
invisible
and i'm watching a woman below me spill cheese in her blouse
     it goes between the buttons
she'll find it later
half-melted to her stomach
i should go shit in one of the bathrooms
     and come out looking sheepish
she's got sunburn too
a big, red, candy-cane stripe down her arm

ten hours on a train today
what are you listening to?
i wear my sunglasses at night, i really do
but only because i fancy myself intriguing
"if every moment of our lives were cradled softly
in the hands of a strange and gentle child,
i'd not roll my eyes so"

she may be a panther in the sack
but didn't his mother teach him not to sit that way?
i bet he wonders if i'm writing about him
     he keeps stealing glances
maybe it's the sunglasses

51)
i was a lone leaf struggling
heaving in my bed
because in the month of February
no-one wanted me

52)
when you're sick
when your senses fail
you have your dreams
only
mine are x-rated
you and i have sex
on a cold stove top
while a portly woman cleans the kitchen
we hop a train, then
the other living force
and we whisper to each other
why
we should have married in that bookstore
among so many ghosts

54)
there you were backpedaling
trying to save your life
and mine
from a current too strong
for even the symphony's
crashing cymbals

58)
i took care of them
i excised all the details
so you couldn't corrupt them with your irony
so the force of your will couldn't bend them to break

you're a liar
but you think i don't lie
i'm better at it, more willing
i can con myself into thinking it's all the same
same place, same time, same person
same charge

but you can't bring it back
even if you capitalize all the right letters
because those little pen marks on the page?
i scratched and bit them until they bled
and i'll unravel it all when i'm ready
when i can see straight

you will never be there
in an empty room
like i will be there
nauseous and writhing on the floor
as they pull your words like leeches from my mouth

59)
she stooped to recover a shoe
that had landed softly on the pavement
she was hit
with the force of whiskey-
painted as a car
and traveling at speeds
her ghost will never travel

61)
when the written word becomes impenetrable
and i am forced to repeat a single page
it will be a delicate death
that i am ill-prepared for

rush

to speak knowingly of sex feels a trifle like fraud
like pinching a pea from its binding
i connect with it in only incremental ways, in a slow rush
that sends a tremble flowing to the pen
like a wave cresting
crashing and subsiding
to leave this form quaking at the loss
always at a loss

because i cannot separate the love
from the act of making it
not as it pertains to you

i'll have you wrap my wrists in lace and
loop it 'round the bedposts
to create a puzzle of ways and means
you asked once if i liked a challenge, and i do
though not when that challenge is you
because when you clasp your wrists behind my back
to pin my arms
to shush me in our reverie
i trust and i trust and i trust
and it will not leave me though you do

all i crave now is your gentle push
your genial pressure
all i crave now is your truth

his name

The censor telling me that there is no such thing as being "vaguely" apologetic, but I think it's true, I think that exists. Not that I know what to be apologetic about or can recall what the initial thought corresponded to. Just that I reject that, that's what I choose to do. I reject the censor that tells me "that's not worth noting". Suck on this notable thing: I snorted up a wad of snot just as a drunk man leaned over to ask my name, and he wasn't in the least deterred. Good man, or just horny. His name was Jeffrey.