interloper's blog

The harbor shifted solid in darkness cracking, it
Came ashore with no life in it, serrated white forms lacking time.

Evenings heaving colder, our illusions tested, stuck
Inside woodframe cages with no air.

Five men, the paper said, decided not to live, all
Just as old as I knew, then two more.

The woman who pulled through before could not survive
The space between metal and pavement twice.

And the channel was not clear but the helicopter flew and
Hurling snow to clear my mind kept the ice at bay.

She had a stroke and I followed it on Facebook.
She fell in the Métro on New Years Eve and I felt bad when
she was in a coma in France but then she got better
almost completely in just weeks. I never commented. 

I had a dream in the middle of it all that I saw her and 
I was happy she was better and we hugged and it
was warm in my dream. 

But in February at the soup party she
didn’t recognize me. 

I couldn’t ask her if it was
because of my hat or her stroke.

They filter in separately,

Discussing themselves and eachother.

I donate some electrons.

Wait for it.

The sound of two

Narcissists colliding.

❍

Silent within, dead still about.
Prone and alone,
Awake and without.
The pump pulls water from the ground, a sound,
Three thirty resolutely rolls around.
A fear, unclear; my souvenir,
Springtide strong-arm seclusion, unbound.

Give in.
Go ahead, 
Slice my soma.
Violate my 
Parotid stroma.
Just please don't let me 
Wake up in a coma.
Pleomorphic Adenoma.

Blinding, trying to read 
Between lines, it's just space unconsigned.
Minding, dying to need.

Where is the end and beginning
Between the eye and the mind?
Reading words you can't find.

Thinking, ready to bleed.
Full mind, empty space unenshrined,
Proceed, it can only be freed.

Where's the beginning and ending
Of what has been lost and defined?
Freeing, planting a seed?

Minding, dying to need.

Sat down by the cookstove
in a dirt-old house
on a bump on the lip
of a moraine.
Wind, winter, ocean cloistered sandbar.
Shut inside by cold fat sticky rain.

Pondering the knot upon 
               my jawbone.
Sorting stuff I think 
I own. 
Mapping out a fortnight on a train.

A loan, alone, a rolling stone.
Resolve, evolve, remove, escape........remain.
                   Plenilunar overdriven brain.

Final Version:

My armor weighs more than I can still carry,

A cage for my skull,

Five years empty inside. 

Circean shapeshifters sold me this

Sheathing. 

In shadows they flitter, in daylight they hide.

Remember: 

Effortless solstice of winter,

Sleeping, 

Turning, legs and arms twined.

Human cocoon

Of breath, skin, Elysium,

Flawless empyrean, fullness of mind.

Now

Skating the precipice, dragging my baggage,

Punch hard,

Pierce through this carapace shell. 

With unguarded organs 

I squint through the scissure,

Unable to tell if it's heaven

Or hell.

Exoskeletal shedding takes trust,

Though I can't seem to know when it's false or it's real,

But If i touch heat then

I'll maybe be able to

Cry

and then actually, finally

Feel.

Last time we talked,
Your two year old twins,
Your cramped condominium,
Your nonprofit job insecurity,
You found a guy with my name,
My face, my job, your husband, he was away,
Far away, away in the desert at burning man.
You cried and you used the L word twice.
You missed me still and I felt the same.
Fifteen years and I still felt the same,
And you were still the same and
If I had said the word, Come,
You would have, I know,
But I wouldn't
And I didn't.
I didn't.

Hedge fund managers and CEOs,
Captains of Industry, Masters of the Universe
Walk their little dogs down my street
Clutching
little bags 
of dog shit.