i ache for memories i’ve never lived.
you, curled into my shoulder
while the cool breezes of morning
dance through our window
blowing loose pages gently across our floor
our pants bunched uncomfortably against our thighs
after tossing and turning through the night
so, we take them off
later, the burdensome bundling in coats
to help you carry stacks of books
down the creaky steps of a brownstone
only to retreat from the cold, then
retreat from the warmth and settle in.
comfortable jeans and oversized sweatshirts
well-crafted novels by authors undiscovered
a pen holding my hair from my face
and your return.
i ache for the memory of your return,
a memory i never lived
the slow, sultry click of the clock like a metronome
carrying my life along a rhythm,
a rhythm that you do not—that
you could not—follow, on the
unfamiliar instruments you play now to
keep your hands busy.
i could never concern myself enough
with the needs of your hands to
keep you.
i could never concern myself enough
with the needs of your hands to
keep you complacent.
looking at pictures of broken buildings,
taken in an attempt to save that which is
at its very basic just a form
with a lot of memories, in the hope
that someday we could restore
its function.
and i think of you and i, all of
those silly postcards we wrote
and the letters which we handed off
as though you were my knight in
shining armor but also my pony
express, and one that read
so poingnantly,
in all of your anger, “Really, I
think we both understand dilapidated
in the same way.”
So, I’m thinking about broken buildings,
again, this time the way it’s all just
fragments. the vaulting of the ceilings,
the trim, the staircase that
might as well lead to nowhere and
the bathrooms—violently beautiful
escapes.
Row after row after row
after row of empty courtroom chairs.
All that’s left are the beautiful
and romanticized fragments
of memory, but the function
left to die was much more complex.
for something like years now, i have been meaning to make a mixed cd
in fact, i believe so many years have passed that originally it was meant to be a mixed tape
recorded track by track with gaps in the playback that could only be appreciated
played overlay with the whirring of the engine of my 1986 chrysler new yorker
and this mixed tape was designed for sleeping which is probably why it never got mixed
(who needs tapes for sleeping when you fully know you will only listen to it when driving?)
even at sixteen i understood the dangers of flirting with disaster,
flirting with the calm, peaceful disaster of driving with music that makes you excited to sleep,
but then, i’ve always been ready to sleep, waiting to dive into my subconscious
learning more about the twirling sentiments of my mixed-up brain by experience reality
a reality tinged by a deluge of surreality, a surreality deluged by a tinge of reality
and besides all of that, i was stuck. on a transition.
so for years, through days and days of classes i sat rushing through songs in my head
trying to solve the age-old question of does ben folds’ narcolepsy come before
or after i’m only sleeping by the beatles. and as many times as i hummed through quiet beats
finding it impossible decide if this was meant to start at night and end at morning
or start at morning and end at night, and maybe that was my problem:
maybe everything is so simple that it always has a definite beginning and an end,
and didn’t i leave her because i was afraid of the gray area between us?
was that what she always told me, or was it just what i told myself to calm the aching in my throat?
and i have grown so old that the mixed tape turned mixed cd in question would now be outdated,
but not outdated in the sense that so many artists have written so many songs about sleeping
that paul, john, ringo and george would need to take a backseat to the likes of mae
again, my unmade mix would find itself outdated in form. and so maybe it is that when i met you,
i was considering track orders for something i would call a playlist, but i don’t recall that detail now.
just like i don’t remember what you were wearing, only how you looked, and just like i don’t remember
what we discussed, but i recall feeling underprepared, flustered, and tired, and i remember
that your name was Ben. so maybe it was your introduction that sent me, topsy-turv
returning to my great philosophical preponderance of high school, thinking
well, he does not seem like the type whose melodies precede his lyrics
nor does he seem to be a meaningless pusher of words??you were more thought out,
less five, meaning three, and more solo, if you catch what i’m trying to say there
but there is no sense on getting caught up on whether you’re more annie waits than you are army,
because this is not a poem about that,
this is about an idea i had two weeks ago watching you recite poetry to a standing-room only bar,
or more, an idea i had as the em cee announced you as Benjamin and i found it odd
to hear you called by your full name as I was in an island of those who knew you as Ben
surrounded by a sea of those who know you as Benjamin and it had not occurred to me??
like the shaded area indicating overlap in the vinn diagram of this situation, to me you are both.
so maybe it was the five extra letters of your name that flash like neon lights depending on your context
which got me thinking about the plaguing philosophical question of twenty-two, that is
i started thinking about the five letters of my name which social custom tells me to disregard
like who i’ve been all of these years is meant to be tucked away into the nostalgic folds of my mind,
so someday i can tell my children, “when i was your age… i was someone else.”
and sipping diet coke at age twenty-two trying to decide who i am going to be in four months,
i thought maybe as someone who oscillates between a nickname and a full name,
you could grasp the difficulty of developing a new title for yourself, or maybe
just as a poet, you could relate to my sentiment that it is strange to punctuate my name
when i don’t really like to punctuate much of anything, and most certainly, not with hyphens
but the government does not understand my love of the long dash, so maybe
as a feminist you could understand my struggle to make feminist choices
which abandon the idea that my surname is indicative of my owner before my family
and as a person who has a name, or two, perhaps you would grasp my desire
to refrain from becoming a munition in this fight, my hope to keep
something as basic as what I call myself from being a statement about my politics
again, i’m caught up in my tendency to polarize a situation,
creating a side that is black and a side that is white with no room for gray
and i’m thinking i’m starting to understand that in the end, it’s just what i write down
not who i am, that i’m deciding, and as you were retelling your story for a thirteen-year-old girl
i thought of myself at that age, thinking of how quickly i tossed my name to the wind
to try hybrids of my first name in the margins of every sheet of notes i took,
and not until i turned fifteen and met my first Jessica Smith did i realize that i did not wish to become one,
only understanding the power of what i call myself when i felt
like i laid greater claim to my words when i signed jess after them
and then i thought about so many unimportant lovers whose tongues i autographed with my own,
swirling each letter of my name with theirs, searching again for some ridiculous symbol of self,
until finally i realized the meaning of the metaphor of all of those makeshift tattoos we wore,
and i understood the depth of my latest playlist which would be the same as a mixed cd or a mixed tape,
because the melody for a first dance as husband and wife can not be boiled down to a hyphen,
instead, it is just the little blue heart in the margins of my ninth grade math notes
and a recognition of the wishes, unchanging, that have finally been realized.
you curl your toes into the dirt,
somewhere else,
i see you barefoot
and i imagine you
turning words around
inside of your mouth
feeling out the proper metaphor
with your tongue,
and thinking,
thinking, thinking,
thinking you would not
recognize these shoes as mine
if they were falling over themselves
to wait for my return
in your entryway,
and i would only know
by the soft memory
imbedded in this humid breeze
if that were you there,
a cleverly placed stranger
and not the strangely placed memory
who i half expect
as your pen pauses
and you turn the page.
i’ve stained my hands red
for too many reasons, for too long
so my hands were unsure controlling the knife,
all the while imagining the intricate architecture
a whole medeival castle in ruins atop a cake
if only each strawberry carved to proper form,
meanwhile,
each strawberry cut to your preference
looked like a vulva dressed in fiery reds
and laughing pinks, exposed, with a gaping center
so unassuming perhaps life could spring from it
and i was lost in the intricacies of taste.
i’ve stained my hands red
for too many reasons, for too long
so my hands were unsure controlling the knife,
all the while imagining the intricate architecture
a whole medeival castle in ruins atop a cake
if only each strawberry carved to proper form,
meanwhile,
each strawberry cut to your preference
looked like a vulva dressed in fiery reds
and laughing pinks, exposed, with a gaping center
so unassuming perhaps life could spring from it
and i was lost in the intricacies of taste.
this is just another bad poem from a mediocre author
who finds peace in life by meditating on the sound
of the clack clack clack of keys on whatever new toy
shes purchased to sedate the melancholy of another winter
and its not so bad because i have seen other poets steal
from the crunch sounds of leaves in the fall
watching their feet as they walk just to remind themselves
we are all above the earth, this death is all below us
and we are taught to survive–to live on like death
is escapable, as though we are but sailors and
the fata morgana of tomorrow is not an illusion at all.
rather, life is worth more than you knew when you took it,
or life is worth nothing more than what existence is worth
what your essence is defined by —
that hole you put in the left side of your skull
and the pieces of your brain that we cleaned from the walls;
so today i stole some parking from a city nearby cos i had no change and
then i borrowed the physical presence of a stranger
cos i need not feel lonely about this anymore and
while we waited for some food i kept the stories to myself
because i’m terrified to buy into the new myth
that we are not dying but surviving, that every sad phone call
is just a dormant cycle in a season much larger than us
comprised of our death and our life which are only figments
of an annal which is much larger than one annual incarnation
but you will not be reincarnated, and just in case
everything i’ve ever believed in turns out to be wrong, again,
i leave carnations in that ugly vase by your grave
so when you wake you have something to salivate for
i met you for the first time, disappointedly,
and after such anticipation??i thought my body
would just shake forever beneath you
and the unforgettable, sweet release of tension
quickly became addictive so i looked for you
in every touch, learning the difference
between this hand and that one
hoping some day you would come to be mine
or at least that i would control you
somewhere distantly; instead,
i was one day overwhelmed by you
in the sweet embrace of a lover
who made me gasp for breath,
made me bite my lower lip, and
made me whisper i love you.
