What you left behind

Time is a cruel lava, it delivers me things that I forgot to tell you
so many moons after you slammed the door on my feet
that was our private joke it was a Mr T Experience Song.
Still I glide along the halls at work and unveil the statues of
this cruel monolith love and unmask this claw mark,
this Letting Go of a Plague
and I abandon reason I staunch the flow of the wound and while I write
poems in the red hot chili pepper light funeral parlor
where we danced on our backs
and here I am
in this familiar glow some mild inferno
Still yearning to give you
my little dead retarded boy,
my stubborn love,
my tornado storm family
my open sores protruding
my sick and dying
dead and destroyed
dysfunctional discouraged destinies
my passion, my blood, my creations
my seeds, my tongue, my pierced flesh
my slicked back vocabulary.
my literary hair colors
my graduate school acceptance letters
the wardrobes of all the women I’ve dated since you’ve left
the sparkle in your eyes, you left it here
your laughter your smile your silk skin
I put them in the flag next to the
condoms
I wound up using
like you told me to.
I still wanted to give you some birthday candles
some introspection, a bubble bath
rose petals in a shoebox
Chinese food, naked strawberries,
champagne baths, naked food, a rose
petal shower, bubble with introspection,
a birthday hug, a rose garden shoebox
some Math homework Tickets to an opera
blank tapes, blank stares, green eyes,
the soft underbelly of my childhood
the nightmares and the broken windows of my family,
keyboard melodies you could read with the Braille in your heart
These are all the things you’re missing out on
Punk rock e mail messages, answering machine wisdom
the 3 a.m. walk to the plank in duck slippers
a chewing gum kiss, a Leadbelly infidelity,
what mad freeway are you driving on?
what wrong path, wrong turn?
what torturous aisle have you fooled yourself with here?
I’m worrying about you these days.
I must be going now.
I gotta go be who I am in spite of all of this
I have a degree to finish, angels to bury, a self to look at,
friends to love, children to birth, lives to touch
I’ll be slinging potatoes & gravy & stuffing
paper hat some letter I never wrote you
remembering what we did together
I’ll stand in line for incense and candles
Dalmatian bubble bath
buy diet cokes & vegetables & fruit
order oat meal, toast, & juice please
contemplate the stars,
figure which one stole your name,
pet puppies through fences,
read Ginsberg to myself
toes cracking,
heart bursting some July 4th nova
masturbate myself into a red white & blue oblivion,
rock myself back to sleep
hold my own hand
laugh all the way to the bank
lull in my new truck,
hate god
and
wished it
never ended
a
lot.

-Circa 1996, Shoebox, CA. (Rosemead.)

Ed. Note: A softer man wrote this. Of this much, we are certain. Has anyone seen him?