i’ve come to understand
                      there ain’t no
                      comebacks no more

                      but today’s the day
                      i overcome that

                                 things are about to get
                                 serious(ly silly)

           …watch out!

a certain thought’s been absolutely
pounding at me—heavyweight showdown,
ounce for bloody ounce—so, of course
I gotta get her down lest she escape
forever, ya know?

without further ado, it is: that
her smile is like the crescent moon,
the freezing, life-giving space rock
in all of its lunar beauty and awe,
shrouded a bit, just after midnight
and glowing just right…

but, it’s accompanied immediately
by (siamese twins; hand-holding lovers;
prisoners, shackled and chained) the thought
that that would be too easy—(I have no
idea from where these conclusions coalesce,
but that’s a whole ’nother story for
a whole ’nother day)—so, *see title

instead, it’s the opposite:
that moon? it takes after her
smile, especially when she
breathes “oohh” in my ear
in tones of warm cinnamon and
honeysuckle, traveling up from
that elegant trachea and passing
through those perfect lips…

I’ve never met her, I don’t
know who she is, for all I know
she doesn’t even exist—

and some vibrant suggestion
from some omniscient source
indicates that all of this
couldn’t be more right—
but that last part?

that last part couldn’t be more wrong.

            drinking away the things
                        he doesn’t want to face

            not a smiling face
                        until he’s facing the drink

                        and thinking:

            how did it get
                        so bad?
                        so good?

Maturity is about:

letting go
giving up
giving in

now die.

I hope he talks just the way you want him
to, never speaks a wrong word, and makes
you feel just right

I hope he lies next to you, without
a movement or a sound; sleeps peacefully as
a corpse, not a single nightmare, all ears
in the morning

I hope he wears the best cologne—the kind
you really love—the kind stolen from the
plants of ecosystems you most adore, but
you don’t know that, and you only
adore him more

I hope there are no affairs, no
arguments—I hope everything is
perfect—that he’s never right, but
you never tell him; you whittle
around the corners, make deals
with his friends on late nights
in dark places when you’re
too drunk to think so you
at least have a halfway decent
excuse as to why you
covered it all up

I hope he never raises his voice, nor
you yours; I hope you talk it all out
civilly, you agree on everything—
that he’s ‘ok’ with how you are, he’s
‘all right’ with you, and you ‘can’t
complain’ with him, you are ‘doing
just fine’

I hope you rub his back every
single night, you rub it long and well
and think of nothing but this
well-mannered man you love and
the perfect life you have
together: everything ideal,
picturesque, amaranthine—
where nothing is awry and
nothing ever goes wrong

I hope his ugly suits make you
coo inside and he compliments you
on whatever you put on, that
his sex and intelligence and
humor is slightly above what
you consider acceptable,
and you feel you are
the artsy, gutsy, pretty
one; it all fits in place
nice and snug

I hope he never makes you scream
or hurt or bleed, he stays
even-keeled and follows all the rules
at all times; he’s always nice, as nice
as spice—as nice as nice can be,
as nice as nice can fucking get!—
and never has an unkind word to
say about you or anyone
or anything else

I hope there are no issues, no
problems to ever fix; no overheating
engines or flat tires or other
dilemmas on your journeys
you’d have to come together
to figure out; no quarrels or
qualms with other folks to overcome
and bond over and be better for; no
need for resilience or resourcefulness
or character—that everything is
easy; smooth and sustaining,
simple and good

I hope he’s not an artist, that
he never shows any sign of
emotion beyond the level of a
fully grown adult mallard, or
creative prowess greater than
that of a peanut-eating prodigy
of a mathematician’s son;
that he does well and does as
he’s told, he pleases many
and people are on his side—on
your side—and life rolls on
and on and on

I hope he sticks to the straight
and narrow, he never makes you
nervous or question or think;
everything is planned out and goes
according to schedule—exactly as
it should go, and was always
meant to be

I hope he never chases you, or
makes you feel unsafe or unwanted;
that you are effortlessly comfortable
at all times, there is no need
to leave because everything is provided,
convenient; no need to search for
anything else, or move, or
change, or try

I hope you never wonder what else
could be or could have been, that it’s
all there—neat, nice, and nifty—
he dedicates every stolen note
and lyric just for you while all
the people of accepted mediocrity smile
and cheer, applauding it all on

but, most of all, I pray:

(choose your own ending)

a) when this serpent without eyes or
poison bursts from my chest
and swallows what’s left of me whole,
that its one and only instinct
is to slither underneath
an unnamed ocean, up upon
an undiscovered land,
and to become undone—quietly
and completely—leaving not
a tooth or scale capable
of fossilization, not a protein
or chromosome adequate for analysis,
followed by no less than three days
of heavy acid rains, disintegrating
all traces of its existence back into
the sloshy mud and mineral soup
from whence it came

b) when the agony of loss, the despair
of defeat finishes disassembling me
to my disheveled core—to dust,
debris; to the sands of the hourglass
of the soul—you find confidence
in the fact you made the right
decision in the face of adversity;
you euthanized affiliation when it
was evident even miracles could never
provide full recovery, and you realize
that though the hourglass is
bound celestially to the stellar brick
of the cosmic wall, even the universe
can be flipped at will; or if worse
comes to worse (in case of emergency!)
you can smash the glass
and snort or swallow the contents
to get high on me one last time—
achieving spiritual enlightenment
without a crash, until you only
want to live again and again

c) when I am deposited like a seed
into soil, a tree sprouts forth
for you and him to eat of its fruits
if you so wish, find refuge in its
shade, chop down if need be, to build
shelter or make paper on which to print
line after line of dazzling and delightful
poetry and prose—

and late at night, when he is all alone,
he can get real close to hear
the whispered wisdom of
eighteen ancient kings, saying
a girl like you needs more—
craves it, desires it, yearns
for it—and learns from
my mistakes before disaster unrolls
the charred carpet—unlike fools,
who only learn after

…and late at night, when you are
all alone, you can do the same—
because you always loved my words
and my voice, my rhetoric and delivery,
more than you ever loved me (as if they
aren’t already echoing on forever
in your beautiful brain)

____________________________________________

but hope is for politicians,
prayers are for those on their knees,
and I only hope and pray
I’ll never be a classless beggar.

            It’s been 50 years since I’ve last seen you. At least, it seems as if it’s been so. And all the while, the music has kept on playing, the dogs have gone on drooling, the birds have kept on singing, everyone has gone on breathing.

            But, have they? Continuously, without pause? Not for me anyway. Not always.

            50 years. Has it been so?

            Tides turn inward, reflecting on themselves and pulling back, offering stark reminders that they were never alone, but maybe they should have been. Masks are put on, taken off, swapped for others less suitable, slipped off and on again, given (or stolen) back for those that fit better in the first place. There’s been knocking on doors with backward addresses on streets turned upside down, touching God under a thin gray sheet, spoken word whispered in unheard tongues with an unrehearsed voice in reverse.

            You, with your wings and things; me, with my feet. Walking where we need to, waltzing along the edges in the shadows of the ballroom, to the cocktail counter for another drink. These dots of ink trickle where they must—wherever they land—and even when it’s all recited, it only makes sense when it doesn’t.

            50 years and I’ve mourned for it—18,250 suns, 17,650 moons, 200 seasons, and one sky that has not changed. There are paranoid androids now in a future we never asked for—but here it is!—and it’s ours, or none of it ever was. Accepting the absurd in this obsolete existence, we meander through.

            Our hair’s grown long, in need of grooming, but there’s a certain charm to that, and if it were to be explained—or even attempted—there would be no charm left at all. That would be like unraveling the intricacies of the Universe, only to find yourself more lost than you began. Or, worse, to find the answers glare instead of gleam. Leave charisma to the geraniums and orangutans, trust me.

            Schools of thought drown with the fish they study, and if they weren’t to ever come up for air, who would care? Life would go on into the unknown—the only constant—just as it always has, just as it always will; for another 50 years, and another, and so on and so forth, etc. etc., infinitely through all of eternity… and you can add another 50 years onto that!

            You can boil it down and drink it up. You can have cup after cup until you’ve had enough. You can sit in silence by the river and at the same time think of everything at once and nothing at all. You can go place to place to place, meet every person you’ve ever wanted to meet (and those you haven’t, too)—meet them twice, thrice, more times than that (more times than you care to count)—wear every thread of every fashion you’ve ever fancied, taste all flavors of all cuisines that’ve left you whet, brush the first finger of your left hand along the back wall of the back room of the antique shop hiding in plain sight in the tucked away town of Blah-Knows-Where? and leave a line in the dust where no one else ever touched, an unusual scent on the tip of your index that you ponder for but a moment, then flick away…

            (after all, this is just some scribble found on the other side of a torn, wet bar napkin, barely legible; your favorite graffiti in a back alley, painted over but still peeking through; an eclipse glimpsed under the overarching crest of a bleached paradigm)

            …Swim in every ocean, breathe deep at all altitudes, and throw away any moment but the one you are in.

            I have done the same, believe me. Look here; my hands are shaking too. They have been the whole time.

            Yet here we are. 50 years later. It’s been 50 years.

            And when we meet, it still seems as if not a single moment has passed.

no!

you don’t need validation
all the time,
you don’t constantly require
a pat on the back

but!

you deserve credit here
and there,
to receive recognition
from people in
your corner with genuine
compliments,
genuinely rooting for you
now and then…

as a human being
you deal with a lot,
and as a human being
you’re worth more than
you know—

and if no one else
is gonna tell you that,
read this from the top
and I’ll tell you
all over again.

            And she said, “Some days, I wake up and I just start drinking. Whatever is on the nightstand, right down the hatch, and I just don’t stop. Other days I take down whatever is there, and I go back to bed. I wake up, and I do it again.

            “Then there are days where I awaken from a dream I can’t quite remember and I feel alive again, young again—better than I have ever felt—and I pop up like a jack rabbit, like a spring chicken, and I bounce all about with a mouth that won’t shut up, and I get things done.

            “Of course, there are days where I go out and I forget everything—what’s behind, what’s ahead, and all that goes along with each—and I just live in the moment and I am happy. I might meet someone who changes my life; they meet me and I might change theirs.

            “There are nights where I can’t sleep and I’m distressed; I think about all that’s ever happened. I am saddened by the joyful memories and overjoyed by the sad.

            “And, occasionally, there are those nights where I sit silently and I watch the moon. I watch as it watches me back—and it, too, is silent.”

            She paused for a moment and looked away. She took a long drag from her smoke, followed by a slow exhale. Another pause as the smoke wisped all around her. Then, she flashed her shining eyes back at me, piercing and bright.

            “And do you know what I’ve found about all of this? Do you know what conclusion I have drawn? It is but one.”

            Another drag. Another exhale. Another pause.

            “That all of it, all of it, is all right.”

you fell in love again
and built yourself up
you made it out west
and made your way back
you partied with the worst of ’em
and killed some bad habits
you fought through another one,
excited for the next

cheers! compass stuck straight up!

now wipe that smug fucking
grin off your face—crumple
it up and throw it in the trash with
the hollow booze bottles and
empty bags, the old ideas,
bloody clothes, and dusty dreams—

because time keeps moving forward, dickhead—
and you’re still in the same place.

with every sleepless night
with every day of doubles
year after year of wear and tear
living on the razor’s edge,

parties and adventures
debauchery and delinquency
time proceeding heavy-handedly
toward a cold, hard, clock,

with waning focus and
goldfish-like attention-span
—internal turmoil—
vacated inspiration and
motivation misplaced
—ill-driven—
the older you get

the packing up and moving
and the not-even-really-unpacking
anymore, from place to place—
the obligations, the responsibilities,
the trying to make it all work! and
to get them ends to meet!

the stress, the worry, the anxiety
—the guilt, the anguish—
deteriorating relationships,
and those forlorn, bereft forever,

the wind whipping whatever
it wants, wherever it wants,
—whirling—
with no regard for
the mess it’s left behind…

it’s years later,
it’s just you, and
“who even are you?”
you ask yourself when
you look in the mirror

shit, you think it’s hard now?
—don’t fret, my friend—

it gets harder

…though once in a while, it’s
the easiest thing in the world.