Halloween, 2009

swinging swiftly toward the megalopolis: life is busy.  life is the sweet song of grownoise, a bitterly bitten bit of language, a secular scenario of spirit.  

the wrinkles of age gather and collect at the corners of my eyes, my knuckles, and my smile,  until morning when they hang  heavily on the shaft of my spine, well rested and well defined; difficult to lift from the mattress.  still more often than not i find myself awake with enough time to brew a french press and light two candles.  before waking becomes daytime i find an hour's worth of it to spend in the shower.  i drink my coffee there with the water at my back and the sun splintering in through cracks between buildings on the block.  i embrace my naked body's dirty drips and, in getting clean, i split my time not between days but only just between.  briefly every morning, naked, waking, crooked, tired, i straddle static fringes where the sunlight licks the lips of autumn leaves and a youthful whimsy of wind sets them to a north winter waltz on my window wall and softer, then, on my retinas.   

i spin records and intimacy and yarns; tall tales of old love and what? and what?  often i tell stories of scandal and cohesion consisting of truth in small portions and verbosity in spades.  

i gave and i take.  

i am bright brilliant –right?– and in the shadows of myself i bow and i ache in shivering shades of gray.  i slow my pace on albermarle road when blinded by the sunlight reflected on the outside pane of some neighbor's fifth floor compartment apartment home- I slow my pace.

that was the first day, a day mundane enough to call monday and familiar enough in passing to call a whole week.

and on the third day, a day great enough to call sunday, i woke up to you scattered about the living room like a rail track rat frantic and shirtless, stinking of sweat and cocaine, taking big steps with big words.  your eyes were like rattle snakes, and wide, and rolling, love.  you get upset when they wonder why you make so many trips to the bathroom, love, to the city, to the melancholy, love.  why you never return phone calls. why you get to forget.  

and i agree with you that they only think they know.  

i can't stand it, though- to know.

your brain, love.  your only home.  your love and your moan.  your poetry and your drone.

i slow my pace, love, when blinded by the light of your memory reflecting from the high mind of the living, and i can't remember the last time i didn't miss you.