You tell the dreamcatcher

“Love is some scary shit”

But what’s the alternative?

looking into whose mirror and mess?

 

Sometimes you loved so hard

the memory of it:

as the gravity of tsunami waves

The ones hitting the crags on Narcissus Wy

where you told her

what she already knew

what was already there

long before you knew

Each other’s names.

 

some days are:

the scorched earth,

a maw of wont

a naked furry beast in the blurry open windows

of grandma’s crumbling castle

shivering and mouthing supplication

to a god in whom you don’t believe

 

Standing over the toilet at the 3 am

eking out constricted drops

Hacking up snot and sneezing

old man deathgasps  into the sink and wastebasket

sometimes headrushes and pins and needles

(Oh fuck is it an aneurism? I

I’m going to die naked alone full of cookie crumbs

The dog yelping the train rolling the world unfolding)

Holding pillows instead of a wife

Pining for the past

eschewing what’s long gone

All the prospects are shadows

every attempt rebuffed or avoided

just like when you first discovered girls

and bullets

 

age is a stark reflection

reminds you of the last time

and all the times hereafter

mimics the shadows

as puppet shows on sharpened sticks

shadows in a box, all the world

is some grinning clown-god’s stage.

 

Every now and again

you attempt to connect

you act like they want you to

you go out into the sunshiney void

you commingle and commiserate

but your haunt and hang

are stone shoes

your hunger is a handicap

(Oh the irony about HUNGER —eating! Food! Shame!

But don’t stop there—let her in

Throw open the basement door

Open wide and—breathe…)

you feel special but you’re not

you feel without but it’s all within

you’re a roman fucking candle

her name writ on the night sky

choked by carbon winds and light years of longing

You cower infernal and misunderstood

aloof and scared as the first birthday

 

You tell the pillow

 I hope she falls in love with me

you tell the darkness

I want you to go away

you tell the dreamcatcher

Capture me the eternity in her arms

 

but the morning comes, the sun comes

the news comes, the coffee comes

and you go to work

where the screaming and urgency

reminds you that Crisis is lifeblood

it pays the bills, sustains you,

keeps you sharp

keeps you close to the breast

of the Beast for whom

you were meant eternal

 

But then maybe she never comes

(or does just not undulating ‘neath you

and screaming your name)

maybe the sun also rises

maybe we are all casualties of each other

maybe the thirst doesn’t quench the wanting

and the wanting is its own poison

nothing can be built from the ground up

without first destroying it.

maybe the antidote is vulnerability

Maybe you said too much

Maybe not enough.

 

You were not my salvation, I was damned in the womb

You were always my audience, before I wrote the words

I wanted you in the cellar, but the keys weren’t ready

It was dark in there, but had room for two,

and you have the fire, you were the light

I knew because I was born the day

I saw you 

You said it was 

the first day of my life

But what would it take

to keep you

until the last one?

 

 

–for You. 

November, 2018.