Like a Poem Day

(Inspired by Matthew Zapruder’s “Lampday”)

They say that there is
a holiday for everything. My
favorite is the one when we
celebrate everything that can’t
be done in poems.

We fill our lines
with hearts and light and
love. Every other metaphor
becomes about birds—
like this, how their wings
burst open once and it sounded
like the waves if you listened
close enough, the rush, the
rush.

Everything on this day
is just like something else.
And I like to write about
myself. Not you, not he,
not she, but me.

And rhyme?
That’s fine.
It’s about time.
They become divine.

My favorite, favorite
part, though, is how
every poem this day
ends in
I love you. I like
that most because
it’s what I’m always
trying to
say, anyway.

what is ghost translated as in other languages

What I want to tell you is every secret I know about myself. I want to tell you the things that I dream about but don’t remember in the morning. There are faces of people who I only know in my sleep but who feel like family, like home, like I have loved them for one thousand years. Are the people we know in dreams always going to be forgotten by us?

What I want to tell you is how much I never used to like that color before I found it in the color of your eyes. I like the color of lakes in storms and stone sunder water and I like you best.

What I want to tell you is every single story that I know and have known and forgotten and will ever one day know. The stories I hear and the ones that have been told to me only once but which now consume my mind. They are the ones I think about at the most random of times. The ones that make me laugh out loud while walking down a sidewalk or burst into tears while standing under the shower water and it makes me think about the way that warm water on the face can trick me into thinking that I can still feel tears. The stories which I was told as a child and which still haunt me. The ones that make me nod to trees and whisper in graveyards and sometimes ask birds to tell me how many steps I need to take to get in this direction from the moon and that direction from the sun.

What I want to tell you is that I have twelve scars across my body and I only know where three of them came from. I want to say how much it bothers me to not remember what has scarred me. It’s like finding that you’ve lost someone but cannot even remember what their face looked like or what their favorite color was or what that song was that they used to hum under their breath and it was the sound you wanted to always be hearing more than anything else.

What I want to tell you is that I don’t want you to only remember me when you’re deep in sleep, I don’t want you not to know the color of my eyes, I don’t want you to forget every story I’ve tried to tell you, I don’t want you to see the scars and think that they too will fade away until there is only perfection and smoothness.

What I need to tell you is that I love you. Please don’t forget this.

Upon Repeating the story of the time I worked for Baba Yaga

 

                Her house was easy to find; there are not

                so many built on chicken legs. She gave me a broom

                upon entry and so I swept.

                The dust rose into the light and formed phantoms;

                faces of the dead in particle swirls.

                I washed the bed clothes in the river

                where men were known to have drowned; I

                imagined that they must have become water eventually

                for I saw nothing.

                I even made her a cup of tea, stirring in a

                spoonful of golden honey, as she prepared

                soup from the tongues of liars; it tasted of

                regret and the impossible.

                For my payment she gave me a skull;

                it was filled with light and it showed me

                a path back home.

             

                I tell the story years later to my lover, when

                we were still at the point where we couldn’t stand for our

                limbs not to be entwined, and he turned to me and

                asked if I had been afraid.

                I shook my head and told him that the only time

                that I was scared had been when I got home and

                realized that I hadn’t been afraid at all.

Sometimes We Break With Eachother

Last night you dreamt

that your lover spent

his nights as a tiger;

stalking amongst trees, paws

leaving indents across the earth

that if viewed from above would

show he paced circuits

around your home, getting

closer and closer but never

coming in. You dreamt his

growl breaking the darkness

and knew that if he ever got

inside then his claws would

leave punctures on your shoulders,

perfect cuts where blood would

rise up and then his tongue

would make you raw as he tasted

the beating of your heart, that

salty copper of your veins, and you once

read that a tiger’s tongue can

lick the flesh right off of his

prey; a slow removal like peeling

the skin from an orange in

imperfect strips.

Last night you gasped

yourself awake in terror;

studied him asleep beside you,

his chest a rising fall

calmness of peace.

You poured water over him,

a lesson half remembered,

but he still would

not change back.

3 Ways to Miss

That was the last conversation that we had. I feel as if I’m falling into some sort of liquid silence sometimes when I think about it: it’s like a pool with no lights on and after I hit the water I can’t find my way out. There were eight thousand other ways that I should have responded. He was my best friend. He asked me what I was most afraid of. The truth was that sometimes I’m scared of my own heartbeat. It started when I was a kid. If it was quiet out, like that one sort of silence where the TV and the stereo are off and the dogs aren’t even barking, and then I’d hear my heart but it never sounded like a part of me. It always sounded like someone walking, trudging in boots through deep snow. Sometimes I’m still woken up at night by my own pulse. But that’s not what I told him. Instead I muttered “Clowns” and chuckled. I expected him to do the same. Tell some half-truth of fear because it would be funny but instead he said, “I’m really afraid of the dark but not, like, because I’m afraid of something in the dark like tentacles under the bed or whatever. Instead I’m afraid of the dark itself. I keep thinking things are changing in the dark when I can’t see them, you know? I wake up and a picture frame seems like an inch to the left of where it should be. I’m afraid that one day I’m gonna go to sleep in the dark and wake up in the light with my whole life unrecognizable.” I changed the subject suddenly to Devin Harris and trade rumors. And that was the last conversation that we had.  I can picture the way his eyes shifted as I changed the conversation. He looked up at me once and then not again.

I check his Facebook page. No one ever took it down. It’s like a memorial. Except occasionally I’ll get little updates telling me to reconnect with an old friend and his picture will come up. It’s that one of the time we dressed up for Halloween on State Street. I went as a vampire slayer and he went as my watcher. God we are dorks. Shit, god we were dorks. I scroll through his page and I keep expecting him to have some lame new update: “Jason is crazy….Or am I crazy like a fox?” Something that will change my mind about what I have to do; a message saying I don’t have to come and keep him company. All I need is a message saying that he’s not alone out there.

At work I spin around in my chair so much that I make myself dizzy. I stand up and fall over. My boss says I can go home early.  He knew what happened a year ago today. I didn’t feel like my apartment and its ceaseless quiet. So I go to my favorite café. An Andrew Bird song is on the stereo and I sing along for a second, we mistake it for closeness, it’s just a case of mitosis, before I catch myself and stop. No one wants to hear my voice. I figure I’ll treat myself. One last sweet taste on my tongue. I order a hot chocolate from the barista. He’s a cute guy who I’ve always wanted to flirt with but I think I lack the genes for that sort of thing. He puts way too much whipped cream on my chocolate and it looks like heavenly clouds. A little melts down the side and onto my fingers. I take a seat at a table near the back. I like to be able to see everyone walking in to the café without anyone seeing me. My heart feels weird for some reason. I feel it beating out of its normal pace and I mimic the beat with my fingertips on the table top. I notice the barista getting ready to leave; his replacement has arrived. The barista looks over at me, smiles, and walks over, “Hey, did you realize you’re tapping Morse code?” I look up in confusion and then down at my fingers. “Really? What am I saying in Morse code?” I tapped out the beat again; matching up to the race of my heart. The barista studies my hands for a second then says, “You’re saying: I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Last Night You Said You Saw Divinity

Do you have some idea

of god? Not as concept,

as person, as being, but

a knowing like the taste

of sugared water, sweet, the time

you drank it

accidentally before the humming-

birds could reach it. Did you

have some idea of the divine?

As touch, as caress, as

the way that fingers run

down your spine made you

have visions. Did you have some

idea of faith? the kind which

comes as desire, as pang, as

the shock of electricity, the way

it thrummed just under

your skin like your blood

was fizzing. Did you have some idea

of how it could be lost? Like river

beds drying up and the eggs

laid by fishes split

open with the sun, cracking

into glistening dust.

Be Social, Be Social, But Not Too Social

You said you wanted to follow me

on Twitter. It’s because when

you asked if I liked to

Tweet, I thought you asked if I

liked Tweety. I nodded

since I grew up on those

cartoons, you know? That little

yellow bird with the big

voice and that fucking hopeless

excuse for a cat. I always

felt like that cat and now

I can’t remember what his

name was.

You said you liked the name of

my blog because it must be

referencing Watchmen. But it’s

called Ozma not Ozymandias

and did you even ever read

that comic? Or did you ever

imagine the crumbled bricks,

the yellow dust, and feel

like you were going to throw

up from sadness? Don’t confuse

your right with your left, you don’t have temporal-spatial

differentiality issues like

I do.

You said that when you saw

the pictures of me as a

child you thought I would’ve

turned out differently. I don’t

know if you meant prettier

or taller or more prone

to attacks of hysteria. But,

anyways, I blocked those photos

on Facebook and now no one

sees me young anymore.

Lines for Someone I Almost

1
It was a strange case of nothing. Our hands filled up with
palm line fortunes that just couldn’t be
read. Untranslatable futures mistaken
for something divine. Here is where you said
that all lines ended and still I held my hands
out for you.

2
We played forgiveness
like a game; dice rolls of I’m sorry and the banker collects, collects,
and then gives out. I think I only ever shocked you once with my
willingness; some words I flung at you in hopes of turning back the
clock. You accepted until you felt full; there are only so many ways to
say it until it feels like emptiness.

3
Of you I used to know nothing
save for the space
that you always placed between your words
chosen so carefully
that I always wanted them to mean everything.

4
We tried to eat bits of gravel, just that once, and I
still feel that sharp break of my tooth and you watched me spit blood
onto the ground until my spit finally came back clear. It tasted like
the earth filled up with salt. Someone noticed that break years later
and I lied, another bit of shame at foolishness, and blamed rock candy.
It was a pun that only I could get. And you.

5
Finally it was you
playing games on the steps of my porch
jumping up one and down two
until I could no longer tell
which was where you meant to be.

The Other Night, Dear

You are aware that I

love you? And that there

is no grace in this world?

That the rosaries I’ve

counted felt slippery and

smooth? That my tongue

twisted and stuttered under

the pressure of the words

in my mouth? That my

mouth sometimes thinks

of you, your skin, the possible

taste of you, makes my tongue

ache like I’ve drunk scalding

tea, sucked the pulp, fleshy

and tart, from lemons? You

are aware that I have

slept amongst lake pebbles,

felt them press patterns down

my skin, because I think

that penance will save me?

That I believe in penance,

though I cannot name my sins,

except in ways that I have

broken myself open across

you? That the shape of

your skull, the lines of you,

fill my sleep and that in

dreams, I find you always

amongst the dead, in the

tunnels, but know your

bones, the way they feel

in my hands? You are

aware that when I dream

you gone, I wake up screaming,

gasping for breath as if,

again, I have learned to

drown, only whilst

swimming in sleep?

Some Rules for the First Few Dates

Do not begin with the expectation that we will marry; I look bad in white and I won’t like the way that you hum love songs under your breath. Do not tell me that you wish to remain anonymous, that you like it best when we don’t exchange any secrets, and when we could easily forget each other in a couple of years. Do not tell me that my name sounds pretty, ask to know whether the color of my eyes is natural, what I would call the color because you’ve really never seen eyes quite like mine, not on the first date. Do not tell me that you feel awkward when I don’t call back right away, that you don’t like it when I ignore you, that you programmed a special ringtone into your phone so you always know that it’s not me calling. Do not tell me that you don’t like to give chocolates or flowers, that they feel cliché, and don’t ask if I agree that giving paintings of crucifixions on tiny notebooks are better as gifts instead. Do not tell me that your favorite color is gray because it reminds you of the grave or reveal that you like imagining what your epitaph might read. Do not tell me that you want to have three children and that you think I would make a good mother because I have strong but delicate hands. Do not tell me that you bet you will hate the way my voice sounds when I’m sad, like someone shouting up from the bottom of a well, or that my laugh is too sudden, too unexpected, too uncontained. Do not after the third date tell me that you love me because you just know. Do not end with the expectation that you will see me again. Do not, do not, and I won’t either.