poems

south orange to penn station.

the sky burning persimmon

over a grey jersey goodbye

flying kites against the world turning

faster than we could see it

i had made myself a liar again

and try to catch The Truth in my shaking hands

never able to hold the solid stone i imagine it to be

you cannot convince someone to love you

i trace the letters over my palm

again

again

i know it

have known it and somehow still need the reminding

i have only ever wanted to, once before

have only ever ached like this once

            but it lasted eleven years

            so you do the math

                        and here i was lying again

                        all this just once in my life nonsense

                        i had never wanted anything ever just once in my life

                        i had wanted over and over

                        overlapping wanting and

                                    wanting

                             and recoiling

                    and wanting more

            and again

    and anyway

so long as i didn’t have to admit it

you cannot fix anything for anyone

but how could that be when it was all i’d ever done

                        aside from the wanting

and was that what my love meant

when i tried it on as a verb

he was a hurt i still couldn’t solve

a puzzle still jagged and scattered over the table

splintered across the floor

in the shards of light that shuddered

through the bare branches above

he was everywhere

the space around everything

but he himself

nothing

never there

it’s too late for that he says

because why i fall open laughing

                        that sort of safe mocking masquerade laughter we’d gone pro at

because you already hate me?

                        giggling against that grey december and all my choking fear

because i could never hate you, now

the first decade

of the new millennia is closing

and i am up

with the ghosts

in the hours that are theirs

my head in my grandfather’s hands

holding them

frame after frame

as he sleeps into nothing

slipping quietly from life into death

holding

the hand i know well now

the hand whose severed fingers

i have twice picked from the sawdust of our garage

and watched the doctor sew back on

the hand

with a split down one thumb

from that same saw

the same sew

the same seam

the same hand

with a workman’s grasp caked in

every crease worn down

every scar finally soft

at the end

i was surprised

to find his hands

still holding onto mine

or rather

holding still onto mine

mine which were

for once

steady

quiet

seam to seam

in the eye of the storm

at ease

in the heart of chaos

he was not a man i had spent much of this life loving

quiet and distant

but even now

i can’t help but feel

that his life

however small

and creased

and not known

deserved some redemption

            or perhaps just hope

            in vain

            that all lives do

i watch the boys around me

trying on every day what it is to be a man

trying to be both Good and Man at once

trying to become

which so often felt punctuated and propelled by

the legacy of leaving

wondering

when any of us will understand what strong really is

or rather

what really is strong

what the measure of metal is

what metal miracles take

[all] i[’ve ever] want[ed was] to close the wound

my arms are open

but that means they are also empty

and so i am taking up with ghosts

and liars

again

this great grief

the one we all had

just from living

that felt so personal

and specific

and awake

and was

in fact

the most universal

and mundane,

the most every day

we were all all bad

and all all good

and all all innocent of what was to come

we were all still packing our backpacks

and running away from home

we were all afraid of who we really were

we were all staring at the sun

            blinding ourselves over and over

            just to survive

            just to keep beginning in this world of endings

we were all peaches

               all dying as we ripened

we were all

we were all

and there was nothing for it.

just the hands

split

and creased

and empty

and open

and there.