Neither here nor there

Nose to the Glass

It’s apparent to me
That some people are not alone.
I wonder who they are, and how they live.
I wonder where they are,
And dream of their houses.

I assume that there’s a box
With a lock and a key.
They were given it, or took it,
And now they have it,
While I do not.

Do they know each other?
Are they exclusive, an elect?
Or is it, rather, that if they knew about me,
If they could find me,
They would add me to their number?

*******

Odd Dreams
(for Sam)

When you dreamt you wore a gladiator suit,
Did it make you a brute?
You said it was uncomfortable,
You complained the breastplate hurt.
I said, I can dig it,
You should change your shirt.

I dreamt I wore a leash of gossamer thread,
And shoes of lead.
I said I couldn’t work the clasp,
I complained that it resisted.
You gently touched my throat,
And explained that it was twisted.

*******

Penn Station

Brutality is casual here.
To impassively regard the lost,
The abandoned people who wander here,
To indulge cruelty,
Feels natural.

But I’m granted a small mercy today.
Songs you poured into my ear
Drown in the din and go quiet.
I don’t have to fight them off,
And I don’t have to beg:
Oh, please, not that one.

Here, under the unblinking gaze of the station,
Crushed by those running to catch their lives,
I am shattered.
But broken into manageable pieces,
I can breathe.

*******

Rhyming is Harder than it Looks II
(for Anne)

We two drink our days undiluted,
Having found that they’re best taken neat;
And when the visions began to grow dim in the west,
We bought wings on credit and flew to the east.

It’s a fact that there’s no greener grass to be found,
Than the patch that is passed on the wing;
We’ve torn down our lives for a wind-whispered lure,
Inflexible chaos: Is there such a thing?

*******

Head Cold

When I fall,
My head believes I will land on my feet,
Because I always do,
But my heart knows that someday I will not,
That someday I won’t stick the landing.
As I descend, I feel a distant curiosity.

Is this that fall?

When I’m hoarse,
My head believes my voice will heal
Because it always has,
But my heart knows that someday it will not,
That someday I’ll never sing again.
I’ll shatter my voice as I do everything I handle.

I think I’ll miss my voice more than the rest.

*******

Tardis

A thousand thoughts brush past each other,
Exhausted tourists wandering,
Scowling and irritated,
Searching the endless rooms in my head
For a place to sit.
There are windows in every room, and light,
But no North Star,
And nobody at the helm.

*******

Like Clockwork

They say that the rhythm is in the silences, but
I never know whether silence is a gap or a void,
I never know whether I’m alone in a crowd,
Or I am the crowd.
They say that life is short,
But I say that life is long,
I say the minutes choke the hours,
And force the days to give way,
To make time for all the willful accidents.

Healing

I am a house, ramshackle and sprawling,
With labyrinthine passageways and secret rooms.

But when Pain came to stay,
He chose my heart for his rest,
Filling every inch, every crevice,
Until everything else was crowded out,
And my heart was empty but for him.

Time, though, is canny and stubborn.
Slipping in unnoticed,
A mist under the door,
She went about the business of healing all wounds,
So that now, escorted by Time,
Pain is withdrawing from me,
Preparing to depart.

It’s a strange and lonely feeling to experience healing.
To perceive the slowing of the blood, the closing of the wound,
The fading of the bruise,
Knowing that the texture, the shape of me,
That which is fundamental,
Will never be precisely the same,
I am bereft.

As Pain leaves, arm in arm with Time,
And I wait for her to return,
I wonder who she will bring,
Who will live in that room next,
And I think:

When Pain is all that’s left of Care,
It’s a mournful thing to watch him go.

*******

90 WPM

It’s not my fault,
That too many words live in my head,
And trapped in a population too dense,
Some will scheme to escape.

Those words which my mouth can’t speak,
Sneak down to my wrists,
And in a mad dash past my palms,
Make a run for it.

Slipping between my fingers,
These fugitives are rioters and arsonists,
And of all my words,
The most dear.

*******

The Astrologist
(For Vanessa)

She traced a line with an elegant finger.
Then another, and again,
Each followed with delicate care,
And regarding her fanciful diagram,
She told me that I am water.

She said: You take the shape of the thing that holds you.
You’re the color of what is inside you,
You’re broken by an intrusion,
And reassembled by its passage,
You’re geared to leave beads on windows and feathers on sand.

She said: Yours is the Twelfth House.
The one most dimly lit,
It’s just down the street, dear, you can’t miss it,
That one, with the scrap of a garden,
The house numbered twelve, tucked beneath the horizon.

I’ve been here before.
I know this house,
Where in the space between dark and dawn,
All of the hidden and formless things are found:
Secrets, dreams, deceptions, great truths and small lies, and me.

Maybe I’ll run.
Maybe I’ll toss frilly things into a tattered bag,
Take off at midnight,
Fly with Neptune to that place where magic resides,
And escape into the warmth of the illusory.

We’ll get drunk on storms, Neptune and me.
We’ll wander among his earthquakes,
And sleep it off,
In the simplicity of his cool, quiet depths,
Where confusion is believed a virtue.

*******

Neither Here nor There

There was a time,
When I was young but felt old,
My days were too long, my nights too short,
And the sun rested on my skin instead of in my eyes,
As I would have preferred.

After I was old, the nights lengthened,
And I missed their swift passage,
I felt the fear that cats fear,
Startled by sudden noise,
And irritated by the increasing brevity of afternoons.

I missed and wished and bitched,
Through the shortened days,
Pining for conversation,
With nameless people,
I slept uneasily and too long.