but broke my heart

equal switch in the eyes of science

and my inner scars are deeper

than your outer memories of pain

I used to love you

and still do

but you killed me and us slowly

as you healed

and shrank

and stopped watching me

as I cried for help

but drowned in my own lack

Both rush in without the asking
Or creep upon you slowly with a dagger and a smile

The blade slides in smooth long cold and slowly turns

Giggle
Moan
Weep like a child
Vanity sports

Go on. Go. Please.
For your loving wife.
For your daughter. On the edge of a cliff.
For you. Most of all. For you.

To death, Father. To death.
I love you. To death.

Her slippers by the door
A strand of her hair resting on the empty pillow
The nest of blankets often put to the side
now wrap me in my solitude.

———

Lurching, suspended over chill depths,
I ponder my monolith.

Smooth and warm and heaven to touch, my monolith
Housed in the body of My Love, breathes and lives.

———

Delineations, small bits and digits
to give us comfort.

I’m East.

I’m West.

I’m I. Comfort.

Here, I say, take this finger. It’s a digit, too.

No thanks, you say, it’s shriveled and smells funny.

That’s true, I say. But that means its precious. One day we’ll be shriveled and smell funny, too and they’ll put us in fancy boxes or jars. They’ll throw flowers on us and bury us like squirrels.

Arriving to my East – my beloved East Side.
Vertical Ghettos bleed into the horizon.

We drank and wept that night.

You wept for your missing Father. Last seen with Cancer.
Strong Bull of a Patriarch humbled and hobbled.
Your hobbled and humbled state mere hours from its appearance. It began instantly.
No water needed just time and drudgery. Regrets and realizations.
Prisons.

I wept for Perfect Moments. First kisses. Doomed Loves.
Weights still heavy on my mind.
The Lost Swede, coy and insanely passionate on the floor of her flat.
The Bird on Sauber’s lawn, young and insatiate.
Lady K, explosive and unexpected. Neon and electro.
Where are you all now? With lovers more correct or better hung or less broding, doting, attentive?
Less troubled, humbled and conscious of the whats? What whats?
Exactly.

But you had sympahy for me. My ragged drunkeness and pain
of lack-love laid bare before you.
We sang out loud. Father and Son together singing out our pain and longing – Singing Willie Nelson, prince of the blues
Genius of longing. …

Broken, mumbling, solitary Honesty
smiling with broken teeth, arrestingly beautiful and stinking

I pray to my God – bent low, prostrate before It, pleading, laughing
Crying for audience – Please God! Stab my Loves to death! Smite them with terrible holy hands!
And I stab them too – with damned logic, damned reason, damned alcohol and damned bitterness.

But somehow my Loves survive
Malignant gorgeous mushrooms, passions turned in on themselves – the perfect inverse!
Hate! Anger! Rancor! The Worms of Hurt and Heartache!

You – Born on the 4th of July but no patriot
No allegiance to anything or anyone – not even truth! Not even Truth! Not even Honesty – earnest and misguided!

But no matter – now I pause with my knives and turn to memories
Memories denied, forbidden, concealed beneath our wreckage.

There is pleasant-ness in that flotsam, small and timid
Lurking like a beaten child denied toys – without the imagination or will for new games

Holy Fuck! The Dust and Ash!
The Dust and Ash of dead friendship, camaraderie wasted on lust, compulsion, instinct, bald-headed ignorance needing a bath!

Horse fetus kicked and killed and buried, these are your words, only to be exhumed and kicked some more. Furiously.

Verbose rantings into the void, eloquent destruction until only the dust itself is beaten and clouds of it billow about choking us both, covering feet weary from running, clogging nostrils, poisoning lungs until they can no longer draw breath to speak!

And now we don’t speak and we haven’t and I suppose we never will again, my dusty friend.

Brush yourself off. You need a bath.

Mission? Find.
Query Unknown

Meeting dawn
Speeding East

London town
First impressions

Wandering Thames
Riding Tube

Pub pints
English fare

Cured trout
Irish breakfast

Double espresso
Short muscato

Hyde Park
Perfect Moment

…