Back in Tennessee on a green bike
with Trap and Tierra
thinking: if I don’t do it now, I never will
and counting the turns
as I pedal up the hill

Peering into the black hole where a soul should be,
missing mystery terribly
and wondering how to shift the trajectory

Long nights left me short on sleep
and praying to nonexistent entities,
with the rustles at the window
sounding more like God to me

Father, did I do worse in a past life
or is this retribution for the last time?

Send just one sign
for a lost mind
as I walk these landmines.

Or give some absolution
for all the hours spent awake,
rotten choices
coupled with terrible mistakes
and terrible shame

with only myself to blame

giving everything
to people who simply
take,
take,
take

You can say what you want about the folks in this town, he intoned, but there’s nothing more intriguing in the world than the secrets they know,

and they don’t go to sleep until the last person has warned them,

and I don’t care how paranoid you get about carbon monoxide,
you cannot leave your window open at four in the morning, not in the city or anywhere else

But with the way I felt sick to my stomach, the headache coming on, isn’t it reasonable
I mean isn’t it reasonable to worry about all of these things? And as for intrigue,
I don’t think I’m curious at all.  My life has been far too full of excitement,

so, actually, I just want quiet.

What’s the good in that?

Who knows.  What’s the good in noise? I never figured it out.  So, I thought, why not

quiet.  But then he looked very serious, very grim, when,
with indeterminable intent,
he closed and latched the thing

And what could you possibly have found so exciting? What nonsense did you ask for? as if it ought to be nonsense,
and secrets ought to be known, and sleep to be had.  So instead, here’s my question for you:

If you could, would you put all your fears
worries, insecurities, heartaches
nightmares, illnesses
sins and tribulations
into a box under the bed

never ever to live again? could you speak of it all then?

She spoke
and I gave my best reply,
focused more on the what-now than the why

but the last thing I predicted was your absence
from the conclusion you fell on
your knees, bruised and scraped
your knuckles on the ground

What would God think of me now?
just another follower to batten down,
another comma to turn around

You want to think you understand me
, but you don’t, you don’t, you don’t
take off your shoes when you come in the house

I was talking to your roommate
who said you’re not acting like yourself,
and now I know I never knew you

; but still, I wanted to,
so I wish I never opened my mouth
because whenever I do
terrible truths come out
impossible hopes can sprout
and bloom into delible dreams,
acidic and sweet like mangosteens

You like to think you don’t like me,
and you don’t,
you don’t, you don’t
answer my texts until you need something

but I’m happy here without you
counting magnolias as they fall

and when I think about you
I don’t think about you at all

everything is coming later
like rain in april
and robins after the snow,
promises we made without speaking
yet everybody seems to know

so someone told me you liked me

(you liked me,
someone told me)

but I learned that first when I let you down
and you didn’t reach to take my hand

now everything is coming later
like blooms in early may,
a shakespearean fall from grace
turned to private victories
in a public place

so someone asked me to stay—
but if I stayed, you said,
you’d hold me,
which you weren’t sure
I would understand

stiff like superglue,
he asks to turn the music off
in service of good talk, circling the topic

at a brisk walk
me loping to keep up
and searching in vain for a second to speak up

I tell him about secret societies,
he tells me his name
I show him my vigil candles,
he folds his thumb over mine
like an origami crane

and sometimes he wants to see me
but sometimes I stay away
just to sit at bowers park in the rain
just to count the cars on the train

Sometimes, I write poems

and wrestle words into bouquets:

amateurish sprigs of promises,

representing far too much hope—

Plucking the petals

to lovingly rearrange them:

C’est la nouveau chanson,

warbled in perfect polyphony.

Where our measures match up, I figured

we could compare notes,

even if it means pulling an all-nighter

in the name of harmonic progressions—

But, at last, I’ve embraced

dissonance too, and timing

just isn’t important to me anymore.

i like the way when i was doing a puzzle

that it looked like one piece was sure to fit

but no matter how hard i tried

its rigid lines weren’t what were intended

i wanted to bend it

and where the holes were

i was sure i could mend it

but even if i could then the 

bigger picture would be distended

so if it’s the piece i never expected

the image changes, it self-explains

and i feel silly for not seeing the obvious

brush lines in the paint

this was the thing i was making!

this was it all along!

any other landscape in my mind

was both impossible and wrong.

this is the peace i was looking for—

the completion of the vision

(and with this addition

still nothing was ever missing)

I never knew but did eventually discover

the calculus of our connection.

When you gossip, you twist the truth

like a little tree in the wind

or a snake in a cell phone.

Could you stand to know that No One replaced you?

That your misogynist predictions didn’t come true.

Not because they couldn’t, but because I didn’t want them to.

God, what a joke—

Animal crackers burnt up in smoke.

You keep on checking for any sign

that I’m still suffering whereas you’re fine,

but I now count your canary’s frowns

—she makes her rounds, the rumors fly—

So sometimes she writes me cryptic letters

to mark the passing of time,

and lists the things you’ve done to her,

which seem so close to mine.

All sacrifice was theoretical,

not mathematical.

But for this I would have been a little bit better,

a little more radical.

Last for heartbreaking

reneging and misbehaving

But for some unknown reason,

the people saved me

Collective conscience chaos

because this is a split personality,

poor paradox with a linear mentality

and reluctant ombudsman of uncomfortable reality—

corrupted by circumstance,

tainted in totality

Should we just nurture the peacefulness here?

I don’t want to move one step

for fear a complication may appear

There’s a convenience to the inarticulate

and I speculate you feel the same,

which is why I never say your name,

even when I murmur in your ear

Why would you wait for me?

Why would you wait an entire year?

I curl up in a ball,

somehow smaller when you’re near