Young Poets

play me like a piano

squiggly hooked lines
crawl across the yellowed,
crumpled sheets like hesitant
fingers on out-of-tune keys,
forming and deforming words
of a language neither of us
speaks

there is a little hiding spot
between the G and the G sharp,
the singular subspace in
which your hand reaches
for mine, touching, ever
so slightly

I want to switch octaves,
hell, I want to change keys,
but my limbs have become
heavy and you are the dux
to my comes, the kanon
to which my hands kneel
in this punctus contra
punctum

you are the stinging
on my tongue, I swallow
but it lingers, settles in
my throat, now trickling
down my spine, my nerves
are on fire: I am alive,
I am alive

there is peace to be found
in the silence, in the stretches
of empty space between
one dusted chromatic note
and the next, in the negative
of you whose melodic inversion
is the blooming of something
new

Big City Dreams

eye to eye with the singular familiar
Eye of this otherwise nameless city,
bright purple star in the distance

the bridge’s excrements are pink and they shimmer
“Talk to us, we’ll listen” so when I do glance
at that luscious body of water (is that really
all it takes?) so immense I for once
feel almost-skinny, I make sure
to appear inconspicuous

6% battery but I’ve memorized my way —
Regency, Chapter, Regency, Chapter,
none of us notice red light turn green,
lost in blue screens, now it goes 10- 9- 8-
our impending doom is orange and it flickers
and it’s impossible to unsee: there is no
escaping this 3- tire- 2- some 1- faith

the stars are vibrant as ever and made-up
of spiralling street lanterns, of tall buildings
that stand a touch too still, of a stranger
that actually grins at me

or was that just the moon? I decide
it does not matter, as long as I’m convinced

I never am so I spend my final three percent —
Chapter, Chapter, Chapter —
on checking your location for the 23rd time:
we’re 20 hours, 44 minutes apart (little
traffic) and you haven’t moved an inch

for ease of calculation I equate your phone
to your heart (we shall call it The Assumption
of the Modern Age) and decide that you still love me

still, I picture it: the final plummet,
that inevitable plunge, sweet water
that swallows only once, calmly
or, on a slightly different night: I don’t check at
all and the motive for lingering at each traffic
light is simply to drag out this silent
night for just a little bit longer

dear friend, when you picture
me picturing the final act,
picture me smiling

On Faith

A sudden want of it this morning,
preceding coffee, shoulders
to stretch my right arm over.
It disturbs me.
Artificial coloring disturbs me. Rattle of heating pipes
straining to keep me content disturbs me. Baby talk
disturbs me. Pharmaceutical advertising ending with lists
of fatal side effects disturbs me. What constitutes
purity or filth or proper or not disturbs me. Who
gets to draw those lines disturbs me. Web cookie
disturbs me. The compulsion to always end
on an image disturbs me. Sugar disturbs me.
The never-ending suggestion
of irrevocability disturbs me. So, too,
this want of faith.
Detached from spires, mammoth bodies of religion,
the church bells down the block that inform me
it is time to cook some dinner. A want of words.
A want of worlds.
A want of impossibility. A want of moths
molded from light, landing on me,
choosing to land on me.

My Teacher Once Asked About My Fear

And I said: Forgetting things.

A friend offered his couch
in Myrtle Beach. There is cable TV

for basketball games, though it’s still March
and the jacuzzi hasn’t opened. He’s the waiter

at a run-down diner owned by his Armenian cousin,
who pours me plenty of bourbon. We go home

swaying, eat Walmart cheesecakes by hand,
and if we are still empty, make stir-fry

out of salami shreds and broccoli.
Forgetting things, the trick is doing it before

anything really happens. Are you still there
my curious teacher? I have a new fear

and he’s called forever.

No Time Stands Alone II

I once tiptoed into Mother’s bedroom her violet curtains drawn
her lonesome contour in sheets asking her my lovely mother
can you please call me princess? Four year old boy
no skirts no luscious hair no Disney crown and still she let me
be princess that morning blanket around my shoulders
like exotic fur. There was no need for understanding
no need to explain why a boy needs to feel pretty
no purging for poison in the media in that bedroom
she hugged me loved me this boy who should really be a gun.
In that meadow couples made out in shadows I once tried befriending
a doe red apple in my palm that sugary heart oh how I yearned to learn
an elegance unfeigned. Holding out to her the fruit my sincerity
all unbearable and within across geraniums waiting for her
to love me back. All I got was a shred of eye contact
and she’s gone leaping into the depths of beauty seeing
in my pupils the barrel of a hunter’s rifle thirsting
to own her to consume her motion. A man all grown
not a boy I once longed to be just to now wishing to be an orchid
when everyone expects a weapon a wasp a father
like a whiplash. A consequence comes with wanting
in this world. I spend each day studying the art
of being an aftermath.