[desire]

What is the warm sun
on your eyelids? Is it free?
Can I trust you? Does it matter--
mostly I just want to watch you.
Things are falling
apart, the Old and the New
World. I want
to know your real
name, the name before
your name. At night,
in the turbulent unknown
hour, have a drink
with me. But what is this heat
on your eyelids?
Our blood keeps going
somewhere mysterious.
It comes back, a migration,
a beehive pattern, a sublimated
bit of water. Is desire so circular?
The particles
are rioting, I am watching it
on television.
I am listening.
Rubbing your eyes,
disembodied hearts
float and flower

Lo siento

En tus ojos la luz Sé que es oscuro
historias que nunca te dicen
Y todo lo que quería
fue al salir de esa oscuridad sin tocar
para ser un poco de ron en los labios
escucha
hacia el gran mar en tus ojos
las olas inquietas

evening

Walking under the green-dark trees

over to find you, no, not doing 

anything special. To come in.

The evening is so long.

We have nothing to do.

Empty sprawling summer,

the sun stretches, taking its time,

barely setting.

Like a broken mood ring, 

the sky stays purple or blue, and 

your face is softening. 

We don't have to talk.

The air has metal in it,

the old windows.

And outside, the rain hisses

like a radiator in winter.

We never asked for anything.

If the sun is rising now
it is somewhere else.
The seconds tick and pass

and we forget everything 

we were trying to become.

[blind rambling, or what came out]

i don't really know how i thought it would turn out. i still i guess don't really know how it will actually end up being. something dead, perhaps, suddenly, violently. but couldn't we say that about any of our lives. about any of the lives of the ones that we love. something horrible could happen to any one of us, anyone that we remotely care about. the people we make while making love. the people we meet on the street. the people we meet in schools, as we learn, as we learn, as we learn. there is a vulnerability there that eases friendship. and yet when we choose something that seems so much weaker, so much more dependent, it seems more reckless to love them. almost like marrying someone. you both become so weak and helpless, like kittens, like babies. you even call each other baby. like mothers, like lovers, like babies. and so to see something hurt or die that is so inescapably weak. and so to fear their pain like nothing else, not even like fearing your own pain. to be able to do nothing for them. to stand and watch as god or evil or biology takes over. something Else. something terrible. ineffably. but really, our days are much simpler than our fears. or at least, we could hope that they are. for our fears stretch immeasurably out.

bells

what is the body but a drawn-out vibration
something beating for a little while,
first a gong, then a ripple
widening out, tempering---
another wave in a sea

and even more than your warm body
i want the bells in my ears
in the blue air
i want the clear song calling me
telling me, how wildflowers grow
so perilously

stray thought

the train rushes past us
shivering fast metal,
a wall of bright sound
that drops, like a heavy curtain,
gone.  now
the terrible open space,
wind whips like a calling
on the dark tracks