May/Post-December and 5 other poems

Darling, of course it’s love.

No, I know, I don’t blame you—

or at least, don’t blame you the way

you don’t blame the cat when she

startles and pushes off, claws digging in.

She was just scared. She didn’t know

any better. Come, walk with me.

The zoo, the reptile house. I love

the pythons. Constrictors—curl around

and hold fast. Press in tight. Squeez.

Don’t let go. If you listen, you can hear

the little bones breaking. The loss

of breath. I love them, through the glass.

I love you, but I won’t let you get

your arms around me.

I know—it’s instinct, it’s fear.

Hold fast. Don’t let go. Your grip

a killing thing. I don’t blame you but

I am no little rat, gone soft and

still. I’m going. It squeaks a final

time. My bootsteps on the pavement.

You’re fine. You’ll be fine. I

breathe, deep

and gone.

I make coffee before I put on my glasses

and stand at the counter, squinting

out the window, trying to decide

if it’s raining,

like some half-formed little mole creature

unready for the sun.

These are the most honest moments

of the day, the morning still emerging

out of wet clay, the minutes when

you can still see the lines under the paint,

the stagehands slowly rolling up

the blue sky over the dark one

like so much wallpaper.

By the time I find my glasses,

it is definitely not raining but

still there is evidence:

the concrete darkened,

the grass damp, the ink still wet

on the world.

That’s hope, isn’t it,

that we are not finished–

when things get remade

every morning, there is still time

for the fruit to ripen, the dough

to rise, and someone to sweep

a brush through it all and paint

a better world

Three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon:

My phone tells me, unprompted,

that if I left now I’d get home

9:30 PM tomorrow. Light traffic.

Problem: I’m already home,

sitting on the bed in my apartment.

Open it up, and see it’s trying

to send me back to California,

my childhood address.

No one lives there anymore.

Or rather, someone I don’t know

lives there. My parents moved north

and east. So did I; same directions,

a hundred times further.

They say you can’t go home again.

Google Maps says: yes, you can.

It’s a day and seven hours of driving,

of course, and there’s nothing left

for you there, but you could try it;

an old, broken instinct, like sea turtles

going back to the beaches where

they were born, hoping there will still be

a warm, soft place

to land.

She made the worst threat without

even meaning it; pillow talk,

mist-thin morning, about to melt

in sunlight. I could, she said,

make you immortal.

I don’t remember what I said.

I stared, for a moment, down

the barrel of eternity, in those

sheets, waking up wrists

tangled in that caramel hair.

I vomited in the back garden, after.

That is the closest I came

to throwing myself back on

Poseidon’s non-existent mercy,

just letting myself sink down

into the waves. The thing was that

down in Hades, I could hope,

at least, to see you again. I could

wait there, at the dock. I could

take you by the hand and help you

off the ferry boat. We could walk

through the asphodel, down

to the river, and drown

our old selves and surface,

blind, unknowing, but

together, into the next life.

the ends unwoven in

the ends unwoven in—strange

how the brain is programmed to

seek finality, find closure, in lives

undesigned for neat conclusions.

we play a finite number of times,

but never know the last one—no

final certainty to calculate back,

we can only assume that we will

go on forever.

the snow melts before the snowman

is finished. the scarf knit only so far—

someday, I will put it down, and someone

else will pick it up and bind it, weave in

the ends. maybe not the scarf—the last

dish in the sink, the poem half-written,

the melody with no chords under it. live

with the fact that it stops, someday,

mid-stream—live with the fact there will

be detritus of a life. someone else someday

will clean up after me, will find a thousand

things undone, incomplete,

unresolved

These days, I only date the dead.

The thing about dead people is that they’re

—not resigned, exactly; perhaps

accepting. There’s something

about having already slid off this

mortal coil that makes it easier;

having suffered the ultimate

disappointment, nothing I do

can really ruin them so badly.

It takes the pressure off. No rush

when the worst has already happened.

The veil, crossed, mutes things—

maybe that’s what makes my faint,

gray-mist kind of love fit better

on the already six-feet-under.

Skin, breath, heartbeat; whatever

physical presence I have,

in our bed, you say that’s enough.

When you leave, I sweep up grave dirt;

before that, I make breakfast:

me, two poached eggs and milky coffee;

you, the blackest coffee I can brew,

so dark and pungent you can just about

smell it. You inhale the steam and say

you love me. Whatever warmth you feel,

beyond everything, is enough

to say it back.

the ends unwoven in—strange

how the brain is programmed to

seek finality, find closure, in lives

undesigned for neat conclusions.

we play a finite number of times,

but never know the last one—no

final certainty to calculate back,

we can only assume that we will

go on forever.

the snow melts before the snowman

is finished. the scarf knit only so far—

someday, I will put it down, and someone

else will pick it up and bind it, weave in

the ends. maybe not the scarf—the last

dish in the sink, the poem half-written,

the melody with no chords under it. live

with the fact that it stops, someday,

mid-stream—live with the fact there will

be detritus of a life. someone else someday

will clean up after me, will find a thousand

things undone, incomplete,

unresolved