if this is the gift
i don’t need it
i don’t want it
i’ve learned enough
i’m patient enough

hard-water stains mock me
they’re there, still
coarsely grimy
and perfect

i’m here, polite
easily forgotten
and flawed

this isn’t the gift
this can’t be the gift
this swollen solitude
this fish-like aloneness

these women slip through my fingers
like cloying filaments of a fading dream

how do i keep myself awake for me
how do i keep myself …

…awake…
…askew…
…awkward…
…aligned…
…alive…

untitled
page…

a new
age…

a perfect movement is
a perfect breath is

I await…
…alone…
…but open

i find myself alone, mad,
drinking whiskey and reading bukowski

i realize now i’m not so different
from the things i miss

the touch of a woman who loves back
the crazy moment that spills into a poem

these are the things i am
to other people
to myself

so let the wind and rain
whip around me to
remind me how it is

to be alive

There are things my Love didn’t know.
There are things my Love couldn’t know.

Because I didn’t know them myself,

When they were most important to me…

I sit and drink and don’t write

I sit and imagine, but don’t love.

Breathe

It will

Come

I have been drinking tonight to fend off my loneliness and it got me to thinking about what loneliness is. This isn’t meant to be good or anything. It isn’t meant to be a poem. It’s just my mind. Loneliness is talking to no one like they’re listening. It is being the memory of a dance in the rain. It is turning away from something that is perfect. It’s drinking alone. It is softening your words to say you’re well. It is wanting someone to notice when no one does. It’s waking up next to someone you don’t love. It is seeing people you know who don’t acknowledge you. It is having friends yet having no one to talk to. It’s a memory evaporated into what could have been. It is wanting to be 7 years younger. It’s going for a walk alone on a crisp fall night after all the bars have closed. It is being at different places in life at the wrong times. It is purging the name of someone you’ve loved. It is eating popcorn alone.

Maybe someday I’ll see my loneliness in the reflection of another and realize life is perfect.

a teddy cheerleader
my silent passenger
the last reminder
of how close i’ve been

lonesome but living
love is a horizon
yet still so beautiful
with night spilling through

even if it’s just a dream…
…even if it’s just a dream

6/25/2007