[This is an apology]

This is an apology (from me to you)
in its barest and most earnest form.

And though men have strong and stubborn egos
(it's called chauvinism), it is an apology.

You know what, and all those other wh's.
So it's up and out and done (and so are we, here and now).

A Silent Entropy Filmed with Slow-Shutters

And the moon stopped.
And the clouds stopped.
And the wind
_____blowing my hair
___________stopped

when the car stopped.
___________crashed.

Living Along Main St.

The tap dripped before I brushed, and I pissed into a porcelain cleaner than my record.

A night of jazz and hooch, rock and crocks, the wrong people called and no one got fucked. Some fucked up, but none fucked. I came home with expensive grease to a wall I was begrudgingly familiar with: illegal greens. And the thing is not the smoke itself, which I could avoid with a bandit bandana, but a lack of consideration for my well being in these few, small rooms (albeit from a passe posse that satisfy enough, but are not exuberant). I was in good company, but no one to make me cum, and no one I missed.

Almost asleep, I'm aware that I will be cleaning a mess I did not make tomorrow. Cans, glasses, packs and ashes, spills and vinyl--the room to entertain has served its purpose with no supervisor seeing to its cleanliness. Damn it.

Dr. Spangler's Challenge...

A few years ago, I took a class with a professor who loved literature, but saw little in poetry. She thought that the form made all the difference, and that no poetry ever really caught her interest, her mind, and held it. She ended our debate with (to paraphrase) "The only poem I might be interested in...is one that is read both forward and downward."

So I tried.

I AM [.]
AM I[?]
[?] [.]

simple, I know, but give me a fucking break.

Conversation

A raindrop fell from my hair that should've fallen from my cheek,
talking as we were.

"What if?"

I don't know. I don't know why I did it. I just saw the blinding opportunity and took it for granted. And you were nothing to me but a pair of headlights. Nothing more--you couldn't be; it was night. I jus' thought t' myself, for the last time, "What if?" Of course I considered family and the future and all that junk, but really--really none of it compared to the spontaneity, the moment, the phantom muse that crawled into me over these years and--with a single swift action, defying all consequence--arose and said "listend' me now." It wasn't a rush. It wasn't a cause. I didn't do it for myself. Or anyone else.

Wanna know why I did it?
Because I can.
Because I wanted to answer "What if?"

Cascade, Ego. Cascade.

Them are the you
that I don't care for.
(So many of the same
qualities, to be sure.)

You are the I
that I'd much rather spend
time taking time to adore
and kiss and understand.

We are the they
aspiring, aspiring; achieving
a half-assed veni vedi vici creed
maybe beginning our resolutions in July.

I am the me
who knows only myself and
am unwilling and fine sitting still and quiet
as the all of my everyone becomes contraband.

Iceland

Maybe if I went up and introduced myself,
my first Icelandic infatuation would reply
"Eg skil ekki."*

That would be rather unfortunate, seeing as
how I've come all this way and to leave without
a kiss would make it all a dreadful waste of my
all.

Sure, the land is awe and the lights spectacular,
but the girls deserve my love as I do theirs,
a foreigner only insofar as our countries are concerned.

She listens to my music and wears my shoes, but her
cold blank stares resound the awful silence that we
could never be together.

So I'll board the plane, kissless and dissatisfied.

*Pronounced (in my Americanized transcription) as "yeargh skeekth ay-kee." It means "I don't understand."

Time to Go to Sleep

_________What are you doing?
Don't you realize how tired I am?
You can't do that when my eyes are so low
and my arms are so dangling.

Because soon I'll start thinking things
and believing things and loving things
and wanting things and soon

______________too soon
______________too soon for you

I'll want you. And you're not ready yet.
Why don't we talk when I'm better rested, then?

Solve for X

Puddles meant it had rained recently. Not a lot, but enough to keep oases in otherwise dry parkinglots and driveways. She was glaring out, her expression paralleling the picaresque gloom of a midwinter scene: naked branches, browning snow, and a sky four shades lighter than the pavement in this town.
It wasn't necessarily that she was feeling down, but rather that she was profoundly confused. I'm not supposed to be staring out this window she thought. And it was the naturalism of her incredulity that eventually brought her blue.
Her husband appeared at the doorway heading towards the room in which she stood. His silence and distance explicitly expressed that today was not a new day. It was not a bright shiny morning. It would not be different. He reluctantly accepted the necessary paces (regretting his reluctance because they had only married months ago) to come within an adequate distance. An appropriate distance. An obligatory close. Close enough to put his hands on her shoulders. Close enough for her to ignore his false affection. And she felt his distance, his closeness, a breath away enough to transition from his bitten lip and triangled brow to a stoic calm and pout if she were to turn around.
"I saw what you tried to hide."
She whimpers in response.
"I--...I can't tell you how marvelously disappointed I am...but I can't tell you that anything's going to get better."
He squeezed her shoulders gently to try and instill what little comfort he had to offer. And though he was aware of her awareness of his falsity, it was an all too subtle attempt to save face for his sincerity.
"I'm not supposed to be staring out this window," no longer to herself, alone.
He took some time to understand how he wanted to say this, but did not think to say anything else.
"I know"
...
"but I do still love you. You must realize I--"

Mary considered herself a mathematician when she first realized her gift.
"I can't believe it. She's-- It's incredible."
"Mary: what is three hundred twenty four thousand two hundred and nineteen divided by four hundred fifty six point two?"
"Is this going to be on our test this week?"
"No, Mary; this one is just for you. I have a calculator here, so--"
"--seven hundred ten point six nine four eight seven oh six...seven. I think."
...
"Incredible."

*to be continued*

InsignifAmericana

I walk awake through waving fields of American
somnambulists
No matter how loud I yawp for them to wake up To Wake Up--
Nothing.

Arms at right angles clasping currencies, eyes and minds closed to cultures
and blessings,
thoughts and smiles upon and come from affluence and frivolities...
Sneerable.

And I wish so squintingly that I could stroll slumberly myself, not
having to pay--
Pay mind to the Them that I don't care for. Pay mind to the infinite
disagreements.

I call the Them 'Consumericana,' ignoring the every and any that elude being called
'things.'
I call the Them 'Insignificana,' growing our country spoiled
bastard,

while Daddy Sam walks out on us with pride and honor in his pockets instead
of on his chest.
I sing now of what he stole--hid--what we took away from our
elderselves:

of Voices
of Words
of Move....ment
of Wit
of Eloquence
of Antici-...pation
of Discovery
of Feeling
of Imagination
of Love
of Conflict
of Humanity...My Humanity--My distant and inspiring humanity.
__________My pride?
Of an improbable humanity? Of all and every and any
that is too pure and too beautiful

to be slurred as 'things.' But I reflect on me and--
I'm human too.
I'm no Dalai Lama, I'm not. I'm not perfect at all, but I'm
no Nosferatu either.

Senryu from Buffalo Show

I heard a girl say,
from two port-a-potties down,
"how do you flush it?"

Them Are The You That I Don't Care For

If I can't have her, then I must have sex.
Those makedup stilleto girls meaning one thing
from this ageless fairness loveliness girl
meaning all things.

My thoughts coursing the slim spectrum
of little more than their curves, colors, and moans,
____her singsong voicing eccentricities, epigrams,
and smiles.

And I remain in a velvet melancholy,
knowing I can't hold her but
can hold their one dimension,
the one dimension.

The one dimension we adore in one another;
sex: the cause of, and solution to, my insomnia.
Sex: the physical compensation I enjoy and
the soullessness I ignore.

And I stand a ruined man, dichotomy-incarnate,
both in love and in lust with the woman of my life,
the women of my life, respectively.
My James Dean* schism.

So long as she carries on quiet or ignorant,
I'll endure a silent and polite cold war and
I'll continue discovering new bodies to
please my body**

while my everythingelse remains
distant and neglected (not by choice,
but by my fate to remain faithful in
futility).

*James Dean was a young actor who starred in only three films, "Giant," "East of Eden," and "Rebel Without A Cause." After the 50's and his tragic death (tragic in its description and in his age), Americana has never been the same. He was both a Romantic and a Sex Icon, assuredly.

** This line was heavily influenced by E. E. Cummings's [i like my body when it is with your].

Only

A break from my studying,
my eyes move lightwards
to a soft and distant glow,
far by foot, farther by feet.

And squinting at this
feeble emulation of the sun,
I question why it is so high
that its light cannot touch our heads.

I think about all the lives
that anonymously pass under
its attempted shine at night,
and how lights like this were around.

They were around around the grounds
of my studies, a place which I am
thankful I am only studying.
"Only studying" I say and heave;

"Only studying" but not
"only a place" because
Auschwitz should never be
preceded by "only."

And the higher the light reaches,
the less we acknowledge the lives
underneath, the distant and anonymous,
the darkandpast hoarding stacking corpses.

Return to Sender

Sitting at my window,
I have seen a scene:
a sun lowered and pulling
my sight behind it,
everything orangeing,
shadowing to grays and blacks.

And with the following black,
I have just finished thinking;
alrights and obscurities,
whats, hows, and thatsfines,
lists and trifles, fights and answers,
laughings and smilings too.

Having just finished thinking,
I'm finished for the night. Ink
drying, I am ready to be sent to
tomorrow. Climbing into my
envelope I fold myself, creasing
at the neck and knees.

The warmth and privilege of
this envelope will not go unnoticed.
The travels I'll encounter
through the course of the night
will not be remembered come dawn.
But at least I'll arrive safely.

Mona Lisa-esque

Everytime she walks past, I hafta rubberneck 'er. She is no striking beauty, no keel-over gorgeousness that'd make me pitch a tent for those legs reaching from the heels to godknowswhere.
But she's no strain to the eye, either. I mean, I don't mind a lot of her. I don't mind most of her.

Her eyes are lightless and curious. They bead like the eyes of a stuffed animal, an inanimate softness with a permanent smile and an absence of thought. And though they don't sink into her marbled complexion (pale, hived, and porous about), they are cradled by the subtle billowings in the wake of the bridge of her slim nose, rouged with the deprivation of sleep, carelessness, and acceptance. Her face is long and worn, 19 going on smoker-50, as if she's got no friends, no joy, and works the day and night shifts just to pass the time. The time of an insomniac; it's somethin' else.

And simply to spite these inadequacies, god made her lips their own. A supple pout, red like an autumn Maple leaf, and looking aroused--engorged-even when she's not. And it's saddening to think that these lips may never have been touched and--at that--so rarely smile, even in the weakness of a smirk. I don't care who you are or what god you follow, you cannot unimagine your imagining of kissing her. And I imagine kissing her, slow and powerful. Slow and powerful enough for each nerve ending in her lips to meet their dopplegangers in mine (being a man of lust and not love). But what lust is carried out gentle and precious? Slow and powerful?

The Journalist (Exposition)

First meeting through friends removed, I stared
and tried to hear her through the roar of the bar.

But we managed to establish names and ages--
dialogue--the climax of the narrative occurring

when she lifted her black dress to show me she
had scriptor hipped, passing black lace panties....

We exchanged decreasingly casual causal glances
when lips pulled away from one another's ears.

We exchanged subtle flirtationsmiles and eyes,
uprooting my hand from my side to plant it on hers.

So we departed the bar, hopped a red train
and set off to debate ars poetica in Brooklyn.

--"So--why do you think I let you up here?"
aired from her mouth like cigarette smoke.

I sputtered "To discuss poetry?" "Maybe," coyly.
She stopped me, mounted me, and kissed me.

I kissed back, mounted her, and said with a kick
and a grin "I had hoped, but I hadn't thought."

It was nice; we sweat, spit, and our bodies came
away with blue bruises and streaking scratches.

...We smilingly whispered poetry on the floor in the
dark hours of that morning at the end of her bed.

We try to recall what we said, why we felt, how
we were, and remember only the sex and regret.

"Anybahdy gotta pen in heah? I'm notta Boy Scout f' chris'sake."

"Faggot, nigger, kike" and the like:
words I've seen carved into white
on tiles, plastics, walls, and boxes
of tissues with knives in order to shock us.

And I wouldn't think to look for hatred and slurs
intuitively in the bathrooms first.
But men seem torn to drive their knives in
or not and consider their silence a sin

because I guess their thinking that this is a must
to write to other anonymous boobs their lusts
of women and hilarity, bigotry and booze
with single, simple-sentence manifestos like "I hate jews!"

And the opinions are grand and the opinions are bold
with the pretentious intention of spreading what's told,
selling to like-minded fools, the young and naive,
who should be so taken by what they read as they relieve

themselves of the burdens of food, and standing in thought
to instead sit and rest for a moment; so deeply sought,
for a chance to abandon our social realities
and in our solitude contemplate those angry misanthropies.

untitled

_We're not together
but
she'll__never leave me.

Anastasiya

Chapter One: Let's Begin in Medias Res....

I'm beginning to think that I'm never going to tell you,
because there are so many ways, too many ways,
infinite ways to say it all wrong...to screw it all up.
To s-s-stu-stutter and stam-mer.
To be too forward, too honest.
To discomfort, confuse, and hurt you,
when all I want and--really--all I need
to achieve the vocalized pinnacle of "spectacular"* slowly and sincerely
is a smile on your face,
a brush of your knee or fingers,
when I proclaim that--
when I work up the courage,
and an impulsive and powerful enough "FUCK IT" to say
"i miss you...terribly. i mean, [take a breath] being with you."

Chapter Two: Let's Continue with Reality....

You're not going to smile, though.
You're not going to embrace me then, trying out your broken Italian:
"Ti amo, mi amor!" or is it "amore?"
You're not going to say what you said or do what you did
the last time I told you, the first time I told you
or showed you, rather, that I like you.
No: that I liked you.
Yes: that I love you.
You're going to feel awful and want to go home.
And I understand, and know and love you too well and too much to say any more. Much more
but do know and remember...
Years ago we spoke of 'unconditional love.'
I've forgotten who argued what point, but it's true.
I'm still in love, unconditionally.
Mom once told me "I haven't seen nor spoken to him in more than
______________thirty years, and I still think about him all the time.
i still love him."

Chapter Three: Let's Realize How Hard It Is to Face Reality....

No last words and no goodbyes.
We say what we must, and move on. Not because we're strong, but because we're different.
And those same differences which once drew us to one another now tear us apart.
But we say what we must, and leave the rest to silence;
we always were comfortable in our quiet adorations of one another.
...and I would like to slide over this silence now, for one last thought.
You must know that I didn't want to lie to you anymore,
that I lie to myself in this facade of an absolute disregard for ourpast,
that you are the subject of so many poems you have not read,
that I have kept all too long a nightmaresque secret to counter yet thrive upon
all the dreams I've had of you...
all the dreams I've not softly described to your still-sleeping eyes and waking ears,
my whisper your alarm clock.
I don't want to kill what we've become
but I have to attempt to resurrect what we once were.
This is a matter of dishonesty and regret
burdening my aging well-being. Am I selfish, then?
Of pulling myself up by my bootstraps and living out my Carpe Diem O.C.D.A.D.D.D.**
and reminding you of how we once defined "True Love."

Chapter Four: Let's Be Nostalgic And Question How We Arrived at Here And Now....

_I gave you petrified flowers wrapped in a blue composition notebook.
You placed a pressed flower, tiny and lavender, back in that notebook.
After years.
_________After memories.
_____________________After love.
_____________________________After we stopped being an us.
And for the stupidest moment, I had thought you were reaching for
a distant me as the flower's petals uselessly reached for the distant corners of its page.
_Earlier some evening, I gave you my company.
I stood next to you glancing when I felt like it and dancing because you wouldn't.
Later some evening, you gave me your company.
You slept next to me, slight feminine breaths that slid me into my own sleep
when I was satisfied with the delusion that

you were dreaming of me.

The first time we slept in the same bed in 5 years.
_Late at night and out with friends, you handed me a pin that read "I am loved". You said you had found it on the ground and that-out of everyone you knew-I would appreciate it the most. "Merry Christmas."
"Thank you, Atheist."
"I am loved." I am loved. I was loved.

Chapter Five: Let's Write Our Serendipitous 'Coinkidink'....

I read to you on the subway.
"...I'm thinking of Anna, I would give everything never to think about her again."***
And of all the books, in all the chapters, across all the pages I could have read,
"I need to see her again, I couldn't explain my need to myself."
these pages sing of this budding relationship, this flowering togethering,
this best kind of love--the only true love of young love: first love.
This fictional account of a wonderful once-us.
"and that's why it was such a beautiful need."
Not knowing why you are my beautiful need.
"The harder I tried not to think about her, the more I thought about her."
Another writer articulating what I thought when I was 15.
What I think now.
"I wanted to call her name, but I didn't want her to hear my voice."
And though you say you don't like it when I touch your red curling hair,
"I wanted to touch her hair."
And as he writes one way of the infinite right, saying what I can't,
I do not anticipate that you'll quote
"That explains why...you weren't at your house."
(I anticipate...[take a breath] a pause.)

Chapter Six: Let's Remember The Nights' Happenings Remembered....

When we were together, I didn't have to tell you I had dreamt of you because you already knew.
_I once dreamt that you had written something
in your curly cursive longhand over a printed shorthand paper, sitting close but across from me at a table. I tried to read it and could only make out
'Rick' and 'I am'
the latter bold and your hands taking mine as I turned the paper and you closer.
_I once dreamt we laid on the couch of my mother's living room, I facing the t.v. and you away, our bare feet in one another's smiling faces.
I murmured and motioned that you turn so that I could hold you. Still smiling, paralleling then.
_I once dreamt I stood in a foreign doorway on a Shakespearean summer day after having read you this poem. You walked up my stone path, your head down and smirking. You walked up to my squint and confusion, wrapped your arms around my neck and kissed me simply and slowly, and grinned at my shock that this should be your long awaited response to this
______________________________________________________droning confession.
_I once dreamt that we're always holding hands, walking through a Gondry**** meadow or going to a Yanni concert.

Chapter Seven: Let's Transcribe A Realistic Epilogue to A Dramatic Evening....

So I read this to you nights before I left the city,
two nights before I left the city, waiting for a time that would not ruin my time there
but would give us at least twentyfour hours of ecstasy should you respond against me.
You had just come out of a shower, and had you sat closer, you would have
dripped cleanliness and tears onto the pages upon which I wrote the poem.
But you didn't drip, and you didn't cry, and you didn't respond. You paused.
Like I knew you would. Like I know you.
"Well, I'll walk you downstairs." An avoidance uttered with the utmost quietude and confidence.
"No, please--the doors fine." I can't tell you how many cracks were in the 3 steps of my voice.
And at the door, our heads dangling from our shoulders for different reasons,
you opened your arms and I kicked the cat and we said
_"C'mere..."
"Yo-you really shouldn't do this....
I'm sorry"
I tried to bend my neck and crouch my towering to breathe in the crook of your neck and hair.
_"I'm so sorry"
apologizing for the reality that I had just revealed and the embrace we didn't deserve.
I didn't cry and neither did you, but I sounded like it and you didn't and I said one final
"Bye." silently.
With Holocaust-knees*****, morphined hands, breathing the depths of a puddle, and my beating
beating heart, I thought I knew that this is anxiety at Love's feet.

Chapter Eight: Let's Realize That Our Conversation-Chemistry is Dwindling....

You texted me. It's an interesting means of communication by which no matter whether or not I respond, I can't avoid reading what my screen presented. I open my phone and there are the words. It's not like a call where I can avoid your sounds, your words, your breathing, your existence.
_"Rick are you okay?"
"Just in a state of shock. i've wanted to tell you for so long, and it's such a relief you finally know."
_"I knew i just didn't know what to say"
"How long have you known or suspected? p.s.: i told you the japanese wouldn't do: i'm hungry as all hell."
We went out for Japanese for my birthday because it was close and I was there and, having held hands for the first time my night six years earlier, I had hoped you wouldn't forget my birthday.
I mentioned it in the text to break the bleakness of our dialogue and to sneer. You chose to write back "Well at least it was free :)"
Days later, on that day, you didn't call but--again--texted
_"Hey mister happy birthday!!!" each exclamation point a sock to my jewels.
"My birthday is the least of my concerns. there are much more significant matters to discuss between us for now. i'll wait for you to formulate your thoughts and call me later."
Then later came.
_"I'm sorry about how i responded to your wishing me a happy birthday. i just haven't been feeling well since i got back and i miss you terribly.
it was wrong of me to be so accusatory, but this post-monday, pre-discussion timeframe is a dreadful limbo for me.
sleep well now."
You called weeks later, we spoke for an hour, and you hung up with a twinkle in your step and I a limp.

Chapter Nine: An Attempt at A Reasonable And Distant Denouement....

And if you had to know about any of the poems about you that you haven't read, or about how I'm feeling, you should know that I know that I think:
"Who Knows What Chance Will Bring and Who Will Sing and Who Will Dance?"
And that the incredulity of my futile fidelity is nothing more than my despaired romancticism.
So I took the only two photos of you I have and wedged them within the words of this poem's second draft. On the back of each smiling you, I wrote "I have to let go."
Those photos saved me one dramatic night in Iceland, but I have since forgotten them.
I have also since forgotten connecting to Lara's****** words: "Why don't you fucking love me?"
And have since forgotten loving you.

Much to your delight, I'm sure.


Chapter Ten: Notes And Citations Extensive Enough to Pay Homage to Eliot And Wallace....

* "American Beauty"--> "Spectacular" film; scene where Lester realizes his lusts for his daughter's friend and his apathy to the potential consequences of pursuing her
** Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Attention Deficit Disorder Disorder (two ubiquitous disorders put together fictitiously)
*** text quoted from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
**** Michel Gondry, Surrealist artist and media director/ writer
***** Photographs of Holocaust victims, emaciated, with frail, shaking knees
******Lara is an Icelandic singer. Beautiful voice, sung in English and Icelandic; collaborated with Damien Rice on one song from "[Th]ogn"

The Journalist (Falling Action)

"But I wonder why you are so vulnerable in
writing and not in person" She may have sneered.

These were her last words before her
caressing goodbye from our quiet demise.

That simple single-sentence manifesto
breaking my Brando bravado.*

And as though I had nothing to lose I
replied wryly, slurring my sussing.

So I mentioned how I've trudged through pangs left
and right, ladies and gents slipping and pissing over;

how my then is none of her goddamn now, or at least
not until we're holding hands but peeling apart;

how she might be "the reason for the word 'bitch',"**
or that it wouldn't suffice, so I'll take "cunt," please;

how we are all vulnerable when we write. Diarylocks
aren't craniums and ribcages, and catharsis is tarrish.

So I drove home like an eighteen-wheeler that
you don't have to be granite to be [called] a man

and that spider silk thread-lined pens fit well into
both couture lace and blue-collar denim hands.

In our last ecstasy I hummed a love for her.
She read the inconsistency of my charmed and charming

voice, and smiled blankly out of pity or ignorance. She
let the conversation slide into something______else.


*Marlon Brando is considered a quintessential "strong silent" type of man, and remains one of Hollywood's crowning epitomes of (Italian)-American masculinity.
**Outkast wrote a song titled "Roses" which includes these lyrics in reference to one girl, the audience of the song's lyrics.

Subway Observations

So much of humanity is defined by its jarring polarization between the comfort in contact and the comfort in distance. Faces are stoic or solemn, mouths either closed in isolation on these lone treks, or agape in a stranger's unconsciousness.
Distance is comforting when it is a possibility, and our only opportunity to delight in our solitude. In this space where persons sit few and far between, we glance and glare at the few others within sight, often out of curiosity and a mediocre paranoia.

I wonder why he's wearing a hoody in this heat...
Geeze, that guy's patriotic!
He looks homeless...do I have change? I don't want to give him my change. What if my cell dies?

And in the morning rush of our working and meandering population, and in the places with the most neon billboards, the metro cars congest like the streets've got the flu. Here, men cop feels (or resist the temptation). This guy is so obviously looking down my shirt, but I don't wanna turn around to see if he's cute or a pervert. Women stare blankly to avoid eye-contact with everyone, and you always stand next to the punk kid with way too much passion for the noise pumping into his ears. Giggles and glares, stoicism and stares.
Here humanity experiences the intimate space and pheramones of complete and utter strangers.
Day after day after day. After night. After alcohol. Too close for comfort?

"This has raged silently all too long, kid."

You keep saying you're fine and that

nothing is wrong,

but I know you better than that,
and I know that this piercing nothing
hoarding us to ourselves instead of putting
us back together is temporary.

Soon, I'm hoping, we'll move past this cold war.

"I thought you were listening, but you weren't--were you?"

This is a mind dying
in a lack of active
interaction.

Inaction in action
in this desperately passive
interaction.