HUMANHOOD
NEON SIGNS
I’ve gotten used to feeling like I’m crazy - or just lazy. Why can’t I get off this floor? Think straight anymore? Out on the street, I went walking in a punishing heat -nobody meets my eyes except witty signs and luxury designs. Every neon sign every flashing light tries to fool you. Get you on their side, everybody swears they need you - and only you - to make the buy. You feel flattered to be wanted and you don’t know why - it reminds me of that look, that look in your eyes. Never enough in a world without trust, having to rely upon the lightning flash of lust - like it’s almost the same as love. Every neon sign every flashing light tried to fool me. There I was - just stretching out my mind to take in every wounded story. Nothing needs you so badly as a lie, so lonely, drifting, unmoored from real life. Begging, begging somebody to keep it alive. Living rough in a world without trust, having to rely upon the honesty of lust. You had to make yourself wanted, to get what you wanted. Now you got me - this broken prize, clinging to you but blank in the eyes, want is a feeling you can’t take alive. Till I fell out of desire like a slipped knot I fell out of desire and nothing caught I fell out of the fire wasn’t even hot I could feel nothing nothing nothing nothing naught. My want was honest - you tried to direct it. But it was connected - to something I can’t explain, immersed in all my pain, like a root in a ceiling drain breaking apart everything. I never knew it - I tried so hard to cut through it. Never enough in a world without trust, determined broken open and refusing to adjust - I swear to god I saw real love once. But nothing needs you so badly as a lie, so lonely, drifting, unmoored from real life - if nobody believes it all it can do is die.
HOW IS IT THAT I SHOULD LOOK AT THE STARS
MARSH
The year was unrelenting, we argued all the time. I obliterate your positions, and you know just how to obliterate mine. Online, we talk, or say we talk, mute and block. I should turn this thing off, I know I should give it up, So I took a walk down the road, and at the bottom of the hill, a muddy river overflowed, and a swamp in the eddy had filled the ditch with bullrushes and reeds, black water puckers with bodies. Water striders, mosquitoes pierce my jeans. I try to really see the beauty, the blue and green, and light green, and yellow green, and blue green and grey green, and muddy green - but all I can see today is black. Like the new moon sky. Like when you close your eyes - those stars don’t guide you anywhere. But there is no other there, that I have found so far, no any other anywhere, but here. Now it falls, the first tear. And when they hold the election, this argument may end. But everything depends on it still, if we don’t argue they will. I can’t even watch the starlings fly when I know I can’t can’t count even on this, tangle of grasses. The chance is this. Everything balanced on a kiss. Penetration of peel and pith. A body puckers the surface to take a breath -
TAUGHT
In another life - I might trust you in the way I cannot in this one. My t-shirt was wet upon my back, as you insisted you’re so kind to me. You tell me, so it must be so. But in another life - I might reach out to touch, and feel only calm. Because I learn what I am taught. But I learn what I am taught. And the body is beyond thought. And so. Close your eyes. Go ahead and pretend it is how you see me best. I brush the water from my skin, and I walk straight back in to the river I was swimming in. While the swallows go on singing, all the same songs that they always did.
IGNORANCE
I was woken up in the early morning after my flight, by a sound I could not grasp, I did not recognize. Running like water, two toned, and tangled like a wire, flowing, jangled, many sounds at once. “It was a magpie”, you told me, as you handed me a coffee, “the black and white bird you see in city parks.” And you pointed out the window - looking straight in at me - a black and white bird sitting on the fence. I thought about the man who called it a magpie; confronted by the great expanse of his ignorance, he wanted to name it, to detain it, forever in that small phrase. It seemed like a shame, to give it a name. But then again, I don’t understand anything the way I’m supposed to. I drag every river for meaning, scrape my hand on every ceiling. I never know what to say or not say, what to honour or betray in any given day. But I never got used to the sound of the magpie it set my skin on edge, it called like a child like a dog like the wind caught in a fence. When we talked it interrupted, and I would never know what it meant.
TO TALK ABOUT
I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. I know there is so much, that I should try and say, but we lay in bed, and leave it unsaid. I’m tired of working all night long, trying to fit this world into a song. I am lazy, I only want to talk about you. I spend all day with people who don’t think the way you do. When I’m tired of unravelling all their endless kinds of truth; oh I only want to talk about you. I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. What good are words if not to try and and get across, this river that ascends me every time we touch, and to obliterate all this distance I get so tired of. I am tired, I only want to lie beside my lover tonight. When there is too much midnight to ever express, to listen to his breath, and to lay again my head on his chest. I am lazy, I only want to talk about love. Sometimes it feels like the only thing anybody wants me to speak of. Nobody wants to drag themselves through the endless ruins of all there is in this world that is not love -
STARS
How is it that I should look at the stars? I drove out in the desert in a rental car. And I climb up on the roof and lie in wait. For my eyes to adjust. For some peaceful state. When I was a child, my mother would send me outside, on a moonless night, to receive the light cast out in some ancient storm. With a woollen blanket to keep me warm. So overwhelmed by the beauty of the stars. How could I not be? But, how should I look at the stars tonight? At a million suns? None of them mine. Nowhere up there is a place like this. Not one waterfall, no river mist. I felt dizzy, my chest clenched cold and tight. It’ll be 2020 tomorrow night. From Salton City, I hear fireworks go off. As though they’re celebrating all another year has cost. Or is it carelessness? Send another star into the sky. Only to watch it die. Fall across the black in a shining arc. I swear to god this world will break my heart.
ENDLESS TIME
It’s only the end of an endless time. I wake up in my own bed, the curtains open wide, to let in what light the sky has to offer today. It’s only the end of an endless time. They don’t put that in the paper, you won’t hear it on the news. But we knew. It’s just like a sunset about to begin. Maybe at first, you can’t believe your eyes; the sky all lit with colour and light. It’s just the same, as right before you left, we would stay up late, your head on my chest. We were so in love, and the sun went on making flowers from the mud. We could walk out on the street and buy roses from Spain, lemons and persimmons in December rain. All of our lives it had been that way. But it’s only the end of an endless time. They don’t put that in the paper you won’t read it in the news. You have to use your eyes. And it’s so painful how everybody lies. Nobody tells it straight. They try so hard not to meet your gaze. We can still walk out on the street and buy champagne grapes, strawberries and lilies in November rain. It never occurred to us to have to pay. But it’s only the end of an endless time. We laughed so much we wore lines around our eyes. You can see it in that picture of us from long ago; how we changed. And it happened so slowly, we couldn’t even say. I gotta find that picture, I want to look again. I used to think that I could see everything that met my eyes.
SONG
I woke up thinking of a song that I could write. A song to pull the dream up from my night. All day I felt so light, and wild colour bled along the road, in the fields along the fences as we drove along. I was thinking of my song. And what I’d place inside, if I could bury light, in something I could write. Would it explain to you this white moon, hanging high above the motel room? The last gasp of longing that I stretch my hand towards, as though to steal from the moment some souvenir of words. I woke up thinking of a song that I could write.
SWAY
You came upstairs in a rush, your headphones on. You had to play me this song, you said, I had to hear it. The music struck me strange; but when the drums came in you swayed, turning back to me laughing, and I move too, I move too, I move too, to undo some static in the air, the mood I was in, the dust there on the stairs the mess left in the kitchen, the ways I will never know you, and how you may never know me, our many if only’s - I move too, when I watch you move, too, I want to move too, when I watch you dance. You fling your hands, you laugh and laugh, high above the street, nobody gets to see you dance like this but me. When you sway, I sway, and if I could love you more I have not yet found a way.
SLEIGHT OF HAND
I’m pretty tired of this sleight of hand. Do you think I don’t know the difference? Do I not deserve the real thing? Matches that do not light a fire, and candles that do not burn, only flicker on in the cafes at night. I have tried to be good. I only ever wanted to be understood. I thought it was kind that I should play along. And when they light the sign, I applaud. But I’m pretty tired of this bait and switch. I don’t wanna have to smile when I open my gift, and there’s nothing inside it. You never wanted to be good, you never really wanted to be understood. You wanted to be the one who held the cards. And for me to watch you draw the king of hearts. But I’m pretty tired of this sleight of hand. The king is queen and the queen is jack. And I am meant to be laugh, to be glad that you fooled me.
LOVING YOU
When you give your love, you give all your love. You have held me up, when I was not feeling strong. It’s enough. You don’t have to do so much. I can help you too - loving you, that’s what my heart’s supposed to do. Now I have broken through. I’m closer to loving you. In my life, I’ve lived beside the border line, now I have broken through. I’m closer to loving you. Loving you. I’m on my way to loving you. Now that I’m well and able to. I’m on my way to loving you.
IGNORANCE
ROBBER
I never believed in the robber. I never saw nobody climb over my fence, no black bag, no gloved hand. I never believed in the robber. I figured everything he took was gone, nothing to do, nothing to be done. I never believed in the robber, no, I never believed in the robber. You never believed in the robber. You thought a robber must hate you to wanna take from you. The robber don’t hate you, you never believed in the robber but the robber never believed in you. He never saw you, you were two halves of the same piece divided into two. No, the robber don’t hate you, the robber don’t hate you. He had permission - permission by words, permission of thanks, permission of laws, permission of banks, white table cloth dinners, convention centres, it was all done real carefully. Make real imagination, make unreal that which can be taken. Turn your gaze from the window’s light, turn your attention to this sharp knife. I never believed in the robber. When I was young, I learned how to make love to the robber, to dance with the other, to wring from his hand the touch of a lover. I never believed in the robber. Nobody taught me nothing was mine - if nothing was mine, taking was all there was, looting at dawn looting at dusk. Hold open the gates for the want of lust. All I saw was the dust, kicked up.
ATLANTIC
My god, I thought, what a sunset; blood red floods the Atlantic. With a wine in my hand, laid back in the grass of some stranger’s field, while shearwaters reeled overhead, thinking; I should get all this dying off my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really, can I not just cover my eyes? In the half light, soft wind on my skin, pink clouds massing on the cliffs, thinking; how can i touch this, how can i touch this softest petal, softest stem, softest leaf, bending, green, in my palm? Thinking; I should get all this dying off of my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really can I not just cover my eyes? Oh tell me, why can’t I just cover my eyes?
TRIED TO TELL YOU
It was getting late, you were afraid of yourself; afraid that you might call her, that you could not help yourself. And what could I say? It lived in you all day. I watched her in your eyes, and move across your face; like the wind on the water, I tried to tell you. That is the way that you want her, I tried to tell you. You were so afraid to try and pull apart the endless rain you thought of as your heart. With blood on your hands from the river inside, you try to deny it, you never felt the tide of the moon pulling closer, I tried to tell you. That is the way that you want her, I tried to tell you, like the wind on the water. I will not help you not to feel, to tell yourself it was not real, and only fools believe. This is what the songs are for, this is the dirt beneath the floor; I cannot sell you on your own need. But some days there might be nothing you encounter, to stand behind the fragile idea that anything matters. I’ll feel as useless as a tree in a city park, standing as a symbol of what we have blown apart. You know; you break what you treasure, I tried to tell you. But I, I am not sure you remember so I try to tell you. And no it cannot be measured, I tried to tell you, would it kill you to believe in your pleasure? I tried to tell you.
PARKING LOT
Waiting outside the club in a parking lot, I watched some bird fly up and land on the rooftop, then up again into the sky, in and out of sight, flying down again to land on the pavement. It felt intimate to watch it; its small chest rising and falling, as it sang the same song, over and over again, over the traffic and the noise. Is it alright if I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. But are there not good reasons to cry? I swear I’m alright - maybe you could just let it slide. I confess I don’t wanna undress this feeling, I am not poet enough to express this peeling. Was I not yet naked enough? Too quick to blush; already I am too much. Is it alright that I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. But everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky. And it kills me when I, you know it just kills me when I see some bird fly, it just kills me, and I don’t know why.
LOSS
You lay in bed, the sun streamed through the blinds. Sweat soaked through your shirt. You lay a hand across your eyes, every other part of you hurt. From inside the confines of the story that everything would be alright, it was only so wide you could open your eyes, you could only let in so much light. But you knew the story had never been true - loss is loss. What was it last night she said? ‘At some point you’d have to live as if the truth was true.’ When it gets too hard to not know what you knew. Loss is loss.
SEPARATED
Separated by all the work we had to do. Separated by all the arguments you lose. Separated by all the things you thought you knew. Separated by all the words you did not use. Separated by the results you can’t disprove. Separated by all the answers you could not choose. Separated by all the things you thought you knew. Separated by all the dreams you drift into. You try again your arguments out on me, I try and tell you again; but if you wanted to understand me you could, if you wanted to hold my hand you would, but you don’t want to, you’ve committed to this wall we sleep against. If you can’t bury the silence of the bruise, if you can’t look at the wildness of the wound, if you won’t look out the window onto the sea, if you can’t carry your pain you will lay it on me. To carry for you out in the open fields, I bore it by feel; in my stupid desire to heal, every rift every cut I feel, as though I wield some power here, I lay my hands over all your fear, this gushing running river here, that spills out over these plains, soaking in all this rain. Separated by all the work we had to do. Separated by all the arguments you lose. Separated by all the things you thought you knew. Separated by all the words you did not use. You don’t really see any problem here, but I do. You don’t really have to believe me if you don’t want to. Separated by the relief you want to feel. Separated by the belief this cut can heal.
WEAR THE WORLD
I tried to wear the world like some kind of garment. I reach my fingers down inside of all the clinging pockets. In fabric stained and torn and scratched pulling at the seams, I wandered out onto the street like that, dressed so gracelessly. It does not matter to the world if I embody it. It could not matter less that I wanted to be a part of it. Still, I fumble with my hands and tongue, to open and to part it. I tried to wear the world like some kind of jacket. It does not keep me warm, I cannot ever seem to fasten it. Bodies never want not to move, they wanted all of it; to be hidden, to be touched, to be known, to be undressed, to be clothed. Why can’t I be the body graceful in the cloth of it? Why can’t you want me for the way I cannot handle it? Am I ever understood? Am I hidden by this hood?
TRUST
Dim the lights and draw the curtains; this is the end of love. Ready all your arguments; this is the end of trust. Send out all the witnesses; let nobody watch. Let there be no more words spilled at the ending of what - was it time we had? Bring me all the evidence; the baskets of wild roses, the crumpled petals and misshapen heads of reeds and rushes, the bodies of the common birds, robins, crows, and thrushes, everything that I have loved and all the light touches, while we still have time. I watch your eyes pass over me, holding stupidly, everything I wanted you to see. In the throes of this divorce, in this court proceedings; for some reason my mind was filled with all my softest feelings, all the hidden wounded gentle places of my body, I wanted to bare my skin to the grass, in generosity. While we still have time. Dim the lights and draw the curtains; this is the end of love. Ready all your arguments; this is the end of trust. Send out all the witnesses; let nobody watch. Let there be no more words spilled at the ending of what -
HEART
I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, when I know it is the best of me. If I should offend you, I will show myself out, you can bury me in doubt if you need to. I can walk out in the street, no-one need look at me, it is with my eyes I see. I guess that I am soft, but I am also angry, but I will feel all my loss, I will hold my heart inside me. My dumb eyes turn toward beauty; turn towards sky, renewing. My dumb touch is always reaching; for green for soft for yielding. In the pale dim light, I am always reeling, through long midnights of feeling. Of all the many things that you may ask of me, don’t ask me for indifference, don’t come to me for distance. No, I don’t have the heart to conceal my love, if it is too hard to look at me, I will show myself out, walk out in the city. You can bury me in doubt if you feel it necessary.
SUBDIVISIONS
Got in the car, and the cold metallic scent of snow caught in my throat as I reached out to turn on the radio; the unfamiliar songs, the voices sing of love, and of wanting to dance and to sing in the rhythm of. The road was overwhelmed with snow piled high in all the ditches, I drove as though I did not understand all the divisions, the yellow signs and the painted lines, and the order they envisioned was so clear. I joined the steady line of cars on the highway, as though I was going home, but I drove the wrong way. Past the looming walls of subdivisions, out past the strip malls, white fields and gray gas stations. I wanted just to call you then, but still I knew I couldn’t, I left you back at home because I simply could not do it, tell you I could be with you when I could see right through it; our whole life. But what if I misjudged; in the wildest of emotion, I took this way too far? The highway disembodied from the rest of my experience, a narrow band of ice that stretched across the disappearance of the central plan, the guiding hand, the keeping up appearance of a life. But what if I misjudged; in the wildest of emotion, did I take this way too far?
THE WEATHER STATION
FREE
You were always so adamant. You told me that the one thing I was missing—I didn’t know that I was free. Tonight, when I pulled the car around, I was alone under the sky. And I was thinking it was the first year, when I could see somehow you were right.
Was I free as I should be, or free as you were? Is it me that you’re talking to? I never could stand those simple words. Tonight I left before the sun rose and drove and drove, like in a dream. All these years I have followed you; it never occurred to you to follow me.
THIRTY
There was a time when you put your hand on the small of my back. I was surprised that you touched me like that. But there in your hand was a current of life I could hardly stand. I stayed still, and I didn’t mention it, or if I did, I made some kind of joke of it. It was strange—how I could feel so sane, so plain when you’re around. And unbidden to me, there it rose, the fantasy, colored rose and easy; yeah, I could see it so simple, unsubtle—impossible, clearly. And strange, far and as close as the mountain range on the horizon driving all day. There I was so sane—so plain—after everything.
Gas came down from a buck twenty—the joke was how it broke the economy anyhow. The dollar was down, but my friends opened businesses; there were new children. And again, I didn’t get married; I wasn’t close to my family; and my dad was raising a child in Nairobi—she was three now, he told me. Gas stations I laughed in, I noticed fucking everything: the light, the reflections, different languages, your expressions. We would fall down laughing, effervescent, and all over nothing, all over nothing. Just as though it was a joke, my whole life through, all of the pain and the sorrow I knew, all of the tears that had fallen from my eyes; I can’t say why. We walked in the park; under the shade, I avoided your eyes. I was ashamed of my own mind, no SSRIs, my day as dark as your night.
Oh, you got the kindest of eyes, I cannot help but notice sometimes, but you know as do I, I cannot look twice without falling right into the sweet and tender line between something that can and can never be. And just then an ambulance passed on the street, and you took my arm reflexively.
That was the year I was thirty. That was the year you were thirty-one. That was the year we lost, or we won.
That was the year I was thirty. That was the year you were thirty one. That was that year—now here, now here, is another one.
YOU AND I (ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD)
It was always a marriage, from the moment that you stepped into my hallway, shy as anyone I’ve ever known. You choose what to believe in, in this flippant time there’s no real reason not to. We wrote letters to each other as though addressing the ocean. That we stand before now, you in my old cardigan, and I in your blue jeans, and the light turned golden on the distant headlands, and the ocean; you and I on the other side of the world. Love, it is no mystery, it never has been—no, not to me. I love because I see.
But we never got better, we never got to talking, we never figured out the questions, we got good at walking; walking the streets, when it was too hot to eat, walking in step, we can’t help it.
You remember in June, you showed up one day, with a small leather suitcase swaying your walk. And you stayed on with me late into the evening, into all the years that have passed on since then. With no certainty, no agreement, more intimate than I could imagine, but with space I cannot fathom. Like a song with so much silence, just like you in your defiance—you say you never questioned anything; you say you knew from the beginning.
I ask for your hand in it, some infinite understanding. But I don’t know nothing of what I am asking; I have no idea of what it will entail. I asked for your hand like it was too intimate to ask for your mind, or to count on kindness, like I count only on your presence, like I don’t count on nothing else.
Oh, it was always a marriage, from the moment that you stepped into my hallway, shy as anyone I’d every known, curious and alone.
KEPT IT ALL TO MYSELF
There were days when the luminescence of the skies or the deep brown grasses struck me so hard in the early evening—I can hardly take it, that light feeling. I rode up past St Clair, same old city but it could have been anywhere. And the scent of the air so exotic, every thought like I never have thought it. Then I felt that confidence in me, like a child in a strange new body. I kept it all to myself.
Sometimes I loved you unadulterated purely, untouched by doubt or by my memory. Sometimes I loved you in a shadowed way, windscreen clearing but still streaked with grey. Sometimes we held hands like we were children, and I’d never known anything different. Like I’d never known anything different, like I’d never known. I tried to leave you; I left only myself. Before I knew it, I was down in the well. Sometimes I felt like I was floating, high by the ceiling as we were just talking, and kind faces would change on me—eyes and nose and mouth, unfamiliar assembly. I kept it all to myself.
I got so tired of all of the subtext, the subtleties and the minute regrets. You were smiling like you thought I couldn’t see you, like you’re afraid of what I might reveal in you. Is it better if I look away? If all I know I never do say? My love is the heaviest thing, I understand if you don’t want to wear my ring. My love is the heaviest thing so I kept it all to myself. You would think I had so much wealth, if I kept it all to myself.
IMPOSSIBLE
I found that I was angry in the cool of the day—all the tall trees swaying, all I did not say. Though I managed all the details, and I made all those phone calls, and I wrote out all the emails and straightened out the front hall, it don’t matter; it made no difference. All through our disagreement there was a cardinal on the fence. Put no walls around me, I will lay the stones myself, and lay down with my body but give nothing else. Still living with the feeling pent up in my chest, my old lifelong companion, the one I know the best.
Well, I guess I got the hang of it—the impossible. You could say I moved right in with it—the impossible.
You knew I felt unnatural in the blue light of dawn. I left the house in shadow, and my mind went on and on. On the long spool of highway, strange fragments of song, and all I can’t get my way, everything that’s still wrong.
Oh, I guess I got the hang of it—the impossible. And I walk the endless boundaries of it, just to know what you can’t ever have—what is light, what shadow. I guess I always wanted the impossible.
In time learned to rest on the fevered pitch, the change was so relentless, no time to get used to it. I had to get so ruthless, to cut right down to the quick, to wake at six AM and go along with all of it.
But still I was so sensitive I could hardly even stand your simple acts of kindness, the gentle pressure of your hand. Glimpsed from the ferry, green swaths of land. Sleeping on the floor I felt the ocean’s movement.
POWER
You were a friend to me; you told me all that was on your mind. And it meant so much to me, from the beginning, how it was so kindred-spirited to mine. I would think of you sometimes in the early morning, as I dressed to meet a plane, before the cab came. How I let you down when I had the most to give, how I let you down but you were quick to forgive. You wanted to help me, you wanted to sit and talk for hours; but I wanted power.
I tried words, I tried feelings, I tried close my eyes believing, I tried getting you on my side, I tried being on top of it, I tried responsibility. I express myself properly—I got blindly angry, with my whole heart in it, but there was no conduit, there was no sure way to it; I thought that I had blown it. The further I got in it, the stranger it was to win it; I could not have it, but still I searched from sheer force of habit. I felt like I was descending some strange inverted tower, looking for my power.
I wanted permission, I wanted expedition, I wanted to have weight to throw around—for you to look up when I found something so beautiful, and I could tell you somehow. I’d never have to shout, you would listen to my know-how, all the love our love allows. I felt so clumsy and plain; I was filled with so much shame, just trying to say to say to say to say, to call out anything by name. Every line felt lifted, every smooth stone was pitted by the wind and rain that hit it, and I never could forget it like you forgot it. I wanted to set it all down so it would open to you like a flower; yes, I wanted power.
I fell asleep on the plane, and I woke up strange, twisted in the pale blue seat, an hour gone by. The sun was rising again, keeping distant over the blackened blue rim of the sky. I spent my whole life thinking that I was some kind of coward.
COMPLICIT
I was on the sidewalk, and you were in a dream; you said you couldn’t stand it these days, your sensitivity. The city felt oppressive, the heat and the noise, and even at home you felt every unspoken voice. I don’t know how, but I tell you you’ll be fine, and I set the table, and you pour the wine. You always have been capable, always have been kind; it isn’t really your fault, just the tenor of the times. You got a job and lost it, and they never told you why; and you can’t seem to get past it, this ordinary lie. And they’re saying this summer is the worst it’s ever been, with the radio on, and they’re talking. Another shooting, floods creeping in the lowlands, and everybody’s shouting, and I just hold your hand. And I say nothing, I say nothing at all; I don’t think my voice matters really after all. I was raised to hear the curlews; I was raised to notice light, and I watch the little swallows, delicate in their flight. I trail my hand down through the water of the familiar riverside, for hours in such silence I lay beside—terrified, for knowing in my time, for all the parts per million, for unstoppable design. How can you get over knowing all you know? All the facts and the figures you learned years ago.
I moved back to the city; I lost myself in you, or in some kind of fiction, or in some kind of truth. I let myself get cynical; I felt cold and bruised, and the facts never changed, and time only moves. And somewhere above the tree line, silent just like you, the river never froze in, and footsteps break through. And somehow in my heart, am I supposed to make do with the fragment of the stars the blue-white streetlights let through? All the birds not calling, all the hot winds blow; I took your picture in the sunset, smiling in the shadow. You and I, we are complicit; you and I were never blind; now we’re gonna live with it, our open eyes.
BLACK FLIES
Humid wood, you felt good, and you shook your tangled hair down. With the sweat in your eyes, and all the black flies. Under lidded skies you lie down there in the grasses. On the clifftop, you remember, salt stinging in your lashes. Straight line of horizon, and the ocean painful wide. Every time you come back here, you feel nothing, and then you cry out all the strangeness you have carried all year. Every crooked word spoken still ringing in your ears like the whine of mosquitoes. Oh, who are you alone? With your cheek against the stone, what do you think you know?
Under lidded skies, under the rising clouds of black flies, under tangled branches way up high glinting in the last light; you left, you got into the car, sink down into the fabric. And you close the heavy metal door, with your hands upon the plastic, and drive on into the cold. So calm, like it don’t matter. Like slipping into a pond, all the little waves roll and scatter.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY
I don’t know what to say, but stay—until the meaning comes and finds you anyway. You may not know for certain; you may not ever choose; you may find your heart revealed like a bruise—when you didn’t call me, when you did call, like water efflorescing through a brick wall. Now we’re laughing again, walking late at night—the catch in your throat, the catch in mine.
I don’t know what to say, so I say too much. And maybe through it all you felt a shiver at my touch. I want the mud of love to catch at my knees, all the silt and sand between you and me—pulling from mountains every black stone, round every eddy in the river down to the valley below. Dragging for bodies, memories forgot; your hands on my shoulders, everything I want.
Just don’t go—stay—everything has changed a thousand times anyway. Like we had no power, like we had no sway; the heartbreak you know will find you either way.
IN AN HOUR
You know, in an hour it could all turn around—you don’t have to know how. Though it all feels like fate now that you’re down. Strange in your body and strange in your mind, now it’s coming from all sides. I lay you down on the floor, and I close the blinds. It don’t have to be everything that I know you need; it don’t have to be—only minute one, minute two, minute three.
I cannot tell us apart—your pain made free with my own heart. We laid out under the ceiling as though under the stars. As though this afternoon was the blackness from here to the moon, dizzied by distances within you. It don’t have to be an answer to every disaster you know could come true—only minute one, then minute two.
It don’t have to be everything that I know you need; it don’t have to be—only minute one, minute two, minute three. You know in an hour it’ll all be the same: you and I and the gentle rain, the white window through which the wind came.
THE MOST DANGEROUS THING ABOUT YOU
Tonight I’m hoping to be awake; I followed your car down to the lake. We got a table at the old boulevard club. The waitress offered a smile to your joke in politeness; you did not know, you held her talking while I waited watching. You laid your credit card on the table and told me about your bills and the sale of hydro, the incompetence of your bosses and your lawyers, and the warming ocean.
I woke up in your life—I was passing behind your eyes before I knew what was yours and what was mine. I listened; I took it all in stride, your ideas and distorted pride, while learning by heart all your thoughts and your visions. The most dangerous thing about you is your pain—I know for me it is the same. It was restless; you felt it, but never could call it by name. It was yours for life to have and hold, a companion that you had never known, a shadow you saw but never knew that you cast. And all of the sadness you can’t explain poured from you like a summer rain, hand in hand with your child in the morning.
LOYALTY
WAY IT IS/WAY IT COULD BE
You looked small in your coat one hand up on the window, so long now you’d been lost in thought. No snow on the road, we’d been lucky, and it looked like we would be well past Orleans. And past Montmagny; the road giving way to river, the frozen Saint Lawrence white and blue. We went out on the ice and I turned back to you, a figure, distant and small in the long view. Was it a look in your eye? I wasn’t sure. The way it is and the way it could be both are. We got back in the car.
You always tell me the truth – even when it hurts me or it hurts you. Could you go a little easy, would it kill you? Living out the dream, out on the road now for a couple weeks. So intimate with all that we had wanted. All that we hoped for and all that we dreamed – the way it is and the way it could be.
But how long is it going to go on? I’m gonna count on – I’m gonna hold out for – nothing much. A little kindness, a little praise some days, I get so close but I don’t really touch – what I get, or what I need – the way it is and the way it could be.
Two brown dogs came out running cross the highway, panting and low to the ground. And then – they were gone, for a moment, I had run them down. I closed and opened my eyes. They were running up the hill on the other side. The way it is and the way it could be –
LOYALTY
Well you called me – telephone ringing in the night. And you asked me if I was alright – like an afterthought, an oversight. And I stood, so surprised, trying to hold on to my pride. So close, I could hear your low sigh. I said I was fine. You said you were fine.
There’s a loneliness – I don’t lose sight of it. Like a high distant satellite, one side in shadow, one in light.
But I didn’t mind to be alone that night, in a city I’d never seen – all these skyscrapers pooling on a prairie. Built high and tall, as though they all compete just to reach the darkness up above that once here had been –
Somewhere – if there’s a beauty you had seen in me. That I wanted somehow to believe – drift of sentiment and memory. That I couldn’t have, I could not keep, no, it never did belong to me, it was only ever another thing I would carry. Still it held me, loyalty, to a feeling, to some glimpse, of a love that was only ever a kind of distance. That we could not cross. ‘Gather no moss.’
FLOOD PLAIN
All spring I was driving. Every river swollen with rain, every stream a torrent. Over the highway bridges that run high across the plains, flooded. ‘Half of the Maritimes,’ they say, ‘is running this way.’
I don’t expect your love to be like mine. I trust you to know your own mind. As I know mine.
Could it really be so effortless, all in my sight, many hillsides – green and black and distant and rivers serpentine, glinting. I know there’s so much it just can’t mean – you and me. Still caught up in heartache and grief. Yet to come, yet to cease.
I feel like I’m seeing double, all joy and all trouble. My friends say ‘be careful’ or ‘be grateful’ ‘be glad’ or ‘thoughtful’ ‘don’t move too fast’ ‘don’t let it pass you by’. But I don’t expect your love to be like mine. I trust you to know your own mind. As I know mine.
SHY WOMEN
Shy women – you and I – shy, from knowing too well. Every time, as though it were mine, the bitterness that you hide so well. I say nothing at all, thinking of your pride. And I tell you that you look well, and you roll your eyes and laugh, and we sit down together by the window, talking about the weather.
I should have told you – you looked so alight, elegant in the low sunlight. Shoulders wide, as though in readiness to fight – something – you never even touch, never ask for too much, no, you can get by on almost nothing. You and I – forever bluffing. And ever so kind, shy women, shy.
Ice on the trees since New Years Eve, coming down in white sheets. All white power lines, swaying high and heavy. You were staring out, your eyes real straight – like nothing touches you these days.
It seemed to me that luxury would be to be not so ashamed. Not to look away – even this, even this heaviness deserved no less than to always confess, every false smile. To every loneliness, there’s a design, that we witness, you and I, shy women, shy.
PERSONAL ECLIPSE
I remember the dry grass of Nebraska, grey to distant blue. I stopped on hills like slumping shoulders, car cooling, I took off my shoes. I drove out west with my sister, she talks more than I do. When she fell silent still I’d miss her, the sound of the wind coming through.
I remember the smoky cups of coffee at the continental divide, mesas strange and red and snowy. I felt like I’d arrived. I walked on the streets of California in the wail of car alarms. Men would shout out to me passing; a stranger with crossed arms.
I remember the subtlety of canyons black by the roadside; a cut in the rocks as I was passing, just a glimpse as you go by. If there’s something you always are losing – you may not recognise. If there’s something you always are choosing – something disguised.
Lately I find myself lonely – I wouldn’t have called it that before. I always took it as a comfort – what all the distance was for. If you can’t leave clean as a statement – so true that you almost wince. If you can’t leave, you get yourself taken – like a personal eclipse.
LIFE’S WORK
I listened; I always did listen to you. Singing all the way through – your life’s work: passion, caution, timing. Try what you saw, and try what you knew, it was never always true. Your life’s work teasing you, like a statue, so dignified, so blind.
Well they take and take, but they don’t seem to receive, and you don’t sleep and there’s no money. Your life’s work, that you never can keep – few peaks, many valleys. Try as you might, try as you will you were never truly still. And you try what you saw, and you try what you love, it would never be enough.
Try as you might, try as you will you were never truly still.
LIKE SISTERS
Some people say that we look sisters, somehow, something in the eyes. And I’d say ‘well you know I’m flattered’ and she’d say ‘yeah right!’ She’s always been so careful, nobody more faithful. I’ve always been so careful, nobody more faithful.
When she moved out, sometimes he’d call me, I never should have answered. Sometimes you give, you’re giving all you have, and sometimes you’re the taker. Like the whole world went and slipped my way, and yet I didn’t want nothing so unequal. Like unearned praise, like someone I don’t recognise was looking back from my own eyes.
We’d sit and we’d find ourselves talking for hours, and sometimes she would cry, waving her hands as though to ward off something, telling you she’s fine –
Sometimes you have to decide what is wrong and what could be right. But I was too ‘kind’, I was on every side. As though to try to make amends for all the distances there have always been between you and I – me and the sky –
I MINED
It started small – a simple thought. That there was something wrong. And if it’s caught I could set it right or at least, I could try. All through the night and down in your eyes I mined and mined and mined. Given time, what I looked for I would find; I was right I was right I was right.
And every word I overturned like a stone rolling easy. And all I’d see hidden underneath only served to make me lonely. Your trouble is like a lens through which the whole world bends and you can’t set it straight again.
Winter passed and summer storms came and flashed white in the evening. You came in wet, you were laughing and grinning, shook my shoulders, tried to get me smiling. The wind had changed and the rain was relentless, washing everything down the street again. My slow heart wanted only what was endless – to be helpless.
TAPES
I found the little tapes you kept under your bed, and I played and played and played them over and over again. Years ago, walking alone, you sang ‘Oh’.
In your high strange voice, your feet scuffing along the pavement. Trying to sing what you meant, late at night – it was too important.
I’m older now than you ever were, or ever would become.
I COULD ONLY STAND BY
You could go for hours months and days, in that half-hearted pinched kind of way. And you don’t get too often to the bruise coloured lake, to stand, hands in your pockets.
Sometimes you don’t see nothing much there, sunken old moorings rusted out stairs, and white sailboats against the sky, not really knowing what you came there to find.
Not the building’s concrete spines. Not the bitterness you always can divine and pull from your heart like so much twine, ravelling unravelling, ravelling fine.
You got pretty lost there in your own mind, pathways to hallways to doorways blind. All through the winter I could only stand by, watching you wake to the hardest kind of trouble with no guiding line, no guiding line.
I stood beside you; thin as a kite, wincing in the winds cool bite. Telling me you’ll never get nothing right. Laughing as you said it, in the low sunlight – so brief in November, and impossibly bright.
AT FULL HEIGHT
If he don’t mean it, he won’t say it, and I can tell. If I don’t mean it, I can’t say it, and his face fell.
But it’s so seldom I believe it – it takes a clear kind of day. Like air so cold it hurts to breathe it. (And the colour comes to my face.) And I don’t tell my mother, I don’t tell my sister, something so tender I’d rather not speak it, even when I know it – that he’s mine.
Woke up thirsty, beset by memory, coming in swells. And dreams stay with me, long into morning, strange wells. I’ve been free, but I’ve known not freedom; like a kite. It was a glimpse but I did see him; at full height. And what is left unspoken, is free, in the coming and the going, my heart knew only motion. And I don’t even know him – but he’s mine.
ALL OF IT WAS MINE
EVERYTHING I SAW
I grew pale white lilacs and wild columbine – and all of it was mine.
In old recycling bins I grew watermelon vine – and all of it was mine.
And everything I saw seemed to get so small like from a speeding car, old familiar barns.
I made hard wheat bread, and rhubarb berry fool, and I gave it all to you.
I crumpled all my clothes and to the floor I threw them and turned right back to you.
My rotten softwood fence my sagging hydro line – all of it is mine.
The mice come in at night in the muddy streetlight shine see the hulking brown skyline –
all of it is mine.
And all the while I shrunk I pulled my clothes around like my body I could drown.
I dug up shattered glass and forgotten plastic trucks and coiled faded twine – and all of it is mine.
My buckling plaster walls, cracks snake and wind, all of it is mine.
And everything I knew I seemed to see right through like cheap cotton skirts like the Madawaska view. All these things I knew.
Muddy white petunias, lobelia trails blue-eyed, all of it is mine.
Irises shot up high and white lilies tumbled shy, all of it is mine.
I dug up all my carrots with their wild orange hue, and I gave them all to you.
And all the words with which I didn’t know what to do, oh I said them all to you.
CAME SO EASY
Just cause it came so easy like quiet evenings in my kitchen. Just cause it came so easy like little breezes of indecision. Line of ants came crawling through the cracks there in my tiles. Sat there and I watched them as they pillaged in single file.
Just cause it came so freely I was loath to admit it. Just cause it came so quickly – I was startled like I had tripped. And I reached out an accusing hand to the treachery of the street. Leaning as though in the wind you helped me to my feet.
Your kind words came so easy and I half winced at the sugar sweetness. Made me feel so wealthy so I got tongue-tied, I got restless, and I opened my doors and windows to the many creatures of July. Strange cats come in mewling, bugs that crawl and ones that fly, all my flour fell victim to slow and sullen moths, in the heat we both were gasping wrapped in dripping cloths.
Just cause you came so willing I never made you, I didn’t call for you, so sure i was needless but all the strange things of the dirt are obstinately drawn to sweetness bite through plastic through the masonry. You came uninvited with a jar of your parent’s honey.
TRAVELER
I felt just like a traveler as I went walking up my street. Every building so familiar but it’s like I never seen em. There’s the same rows of houses, row on row. I felt just like a stranger as I set my key in the door, and lingered. Standing there on the porch. Little flecks on the brick, where the paint did not stick, I never could paint in the lines. I felt just like a tourist, seeing it all for the first time. Like a guest. Unsure of what I might find. I set down my boots where he would hang up his suits and I brushed the snow from my coat, to the skin I was soaked.
I felt just like a traveller, my eyes open wide. Like a stranger, uncertain and shy. Everybody’s so well meaning, everybody’s been so kind. Called to see if I been eating, wondered when to come by.
You should have called somebody before it ever came to this. You should have called somebody. I wish… I wish you’d called me.
TRYING
I am trying… I am trying not to let words just shake me off. They would slip and be gone like minnows. Just a silvery flash in the shadows. I would be blank like an unlit street sign.
On the bank just waiting on my line. Words would go and then I’d just be sitting there on your floor. Loving everything I see and no way to tell you what to look for. Then I’d forget – or have I already forgotten – all that I love as all the strings that pull me start to tauten. I am trying – for what – I can’t place. I am trying for some kind of grace.
CHIP ON MY SHOULDER
You can have anything you could ever be wanting, the country will give you your fill. I took their advice and I did what they told me, taking my turn as the shill.
Oh this chip on my shoulder I know it so well, sure as the backs of my hands. And I try to be gracious, as ever I can, as gentle and kind as I can stand.
Oh all of them loved me, because I was empty. And they saw in me something they could feed. Cause we’re all overflowing, recklessly growing and the power comes from the need.
But for this chip on my shoulder I could have enjoyed their slippery honeyed embrace. With gifts I would be showered if I don’ t disappoint, but I couldn’t keep to my place.
Oh I spoke to my sisters and the child of a friend but no promises could I keep. Stay always emboldened and don’t reach for that crown but it’s a want that goes down so deep.
I guess that I could have had anything, but I didn’t want nothing in the end that wasn’t tied down. And I don’t think that it matters to me so much as them and I’ll tell not a soul what I found.
KNOW IT TO SEE IT
Take your bag, get in the car, get in the car. And drive it. Somewhere quiet. Where you can sit at the wheel for a real short minute, smoking a cigarette. Cause it’s time for it to leave you and you know it will go. It’s long gone tucked under brush and scrub, overland, roadless. Slipping through fences. I know it to see it, I see it all the time.
You felt small and free like a kid, cause now it don’t care what you did. Or what you might do. You felt light, and somehow see through…
It’s not love, it’s not cause of love. It’s not a blessing or a curse, I don’t know what it is. But I know it to see it, and I know it when I don’t see it. And I don’t see it in you.
YARROW AND MINT
It was the summer of scent, yarrow and mint. How could I forget the slight still scent of blue vervain or common plantain? I learned to know the names they been called, years ago. Flowering mullein. Harbinger of Spring. In the heat, the air lay heavy on the street. Sweating with smoke, lilac, and gasoline. What are you looking for? Something you never even seen. Better to know all those weeds that ever will grow beneath your feet.
RUNNING AROUND ASKING
I went running around asking everybody I know. I already asked my mother and the woman who lives next door. I’ve been running around asking for so long. I wanted to ask my grandmother, but I couldn’t get past the weather. But it was good to sit together, on her couch of seafoam green. All her secrets safe without me. And I called up a friend who lives very far away. I took up all her time in asking, but she didn’t know what to say. I said I wouldn’t keep her, and I set down the phone. Whined from the receiver the muffled dial tone. You were outside smoking, standing out in the snow. I’ve been running around asking like I don’t already know.
NOBODY
In the air, first scent of snow. All along the ground the last milkweed silk blows. Nobody’s ever going to tell you what they don’t want to know. No. Nobody’s ever going to tell you for they wish it was not so, better not to know.
It was hardwon, but I found my place. It was hardwon but I found my place. All I could wish upon you is the same. It was hardwon, but I found my place.
And as soon as it’s found, I knew it would change. I turned around and everything was strange. Nobody’s ever going to tell you, for they wish it weren’t the case. Once lost, not a trace.
But you could find yourself down by a lake. About as wide and still as you can take. With a gladness you just can’t shake. Down by that cold, clear lake.
IF I’VE BEEN FOOLED
Years passed by, here by your side, but with one hand steady on the door. And it took so long, staring back at you, to open the door and walk through.
And what if I been fooled? By a story, or a song, or by a memory remembered wrong. It’s gonna take so long to unravel the con, and by then I know that you’ll be gone.
And if I been fooled, it was not by you, but by a story with the ring of truth. And a story takes only so long to tell and then it’s gone. And I will find out –