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He whispered, “I can’t go with you, less I tear me apart,” and as he closed his eyes some tears fell, and he saw the shade of pink behind his eyes. Her arms were tightly crossed, as they always would be when she stood on the cold and windy streets, and the passers-by turned to wonder whether they had seen such beauty. He thought of an easier life and stared at his worn hands. “Some day I would burn our own house down, so that I might plant a garden where it stood, and paint the garden while it dies, and fight the winter when it comes.”

She sighed, “It’s true, I won’t starve with you or fight the winter… but I will love a painter, and he will live with me, because he loves me.”

“Your painter loves you, but most of all he needs to suffer.” A silence hanged between them. He pondered what shelter he might find in the freezing night, and he smiled. As she wondered the same, she cried.

secret

while you reach so high,

stealing kisses from the moon,

every star looks on

come to light

who will understand
a heart beating, pounding and
making not a sound?

envy

this sad man of peace
speeding into the desert
on a pitch black horse

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He awoke to a cold sunrise, refracting gently through the mist, and quiet prevailed for the moment, as the dreams had yet to unchain their captives. Into the mist the silhouette of his own dream was disappearing, and though he strained to see it, and nearly leapt to his feet to give chase, it dissolved. Though his head banged on his eardrums from within, he felt fluidly ecstatic, like a snake climbing a tree, in a graceful helix, and his eyes filled with tears for the young day approaching bravely from the east. It couldn’t stay, he knew, and at its expiration they together would be tired and beaten, its clean mist laced with a sour and sticky smoke and his desperate energies once again expired. He glanced at his clock, and as if to tease him, it advanced by a minute before his eyes. What a dream he must have had, to leave him in such wonder, and if only he could have kept it a moment before it ran! But if the day could be so brave and unyielding in its advance, couldn’t he be the same? He stood, shook off his slumber, and fell into step with the inevitable.

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Slanted rays of sun snaked through the wisps of steam rising from his tea, while on the table rested a diary, with the beginnings of words, their abrupt ends, a filling of clean, blank pages, and in his mind an empty stage, curtains drawn, an infinite amphitheater empty except, maybe, himself, and though he listened for sounds behind the curtains, they remained ominously drawn and their enclosed space unmistakeably still. He pried with deep focus that they might open, if only to show the stage, that he might know it at last to be empty, or maybe with one stray figure, her being as light as down, come to dance for him with the same devotion by which he now waited, and kept waiting. This, he knew, would not be so. He placed his head in his hands, and the three together he rested on the table, and his tea steamed ever more slowly, and the last rays of sun turned orange the fine strings of silk spilling lazily over the rim of the glass. The sun sent its last message and buried itself in the world, and he dreamed, and dreamed, and his tea grew cold.

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“Have a light?”, she asked the painter.
He did, and he reached in his pocket. “Is it so different”, he answered, “how red, fast and passionate, on top of light, singular and white, becomes such a harmless pastel?”
Her arms were crossed. She was obscenely beautiful.
“Is it so different from how we are, all of us, to each other?”
He lit the match with his paint-spattered hands, standing there by his endless canvas. She smiled at him, quietly, while the matchstick grew shorter. Close to the tips of his fingers, she lit her cigarette, blew out the match, and walked on.

flying away

slipping, still and again, leaving people waiting, asking for favors from busy people, seeing like blind or with blinders, eating, slowly failing a resolution to breathe deeply, knowing:

for everybody’s heaven, somebody might be in hell

wearing a mask, steeping in games, taming urges, smiling

the blind man, don’t pity me, he said, i’m free.
he wandered away into his mind.

brother

i remember most clearly the days of his leaving, and most of all his dreams. he was always there to wake me, and he would tell me what happened while we were sleeping. he would put his hand on my sleeping shoulder.

“i dreamed … ”

swimming, sprinting, flying, but only in dreams. time rolled on and his dreams changed- he talked about textures and visions, outside of words. after a while he stopped standing, so he didn’t wake me any more.

one morning he was there again, i don’t know how.

“i dreamed last night that i stood. i walked to the sink to drink. i looked at the room, through the water in the glass. i was in our kitchen. i had stood, and walked, and i was still standing, drinking. it could have been any day, any morning, of my life. it was the best dream i’ve ever had.”

he stood up for the last time, and i walked him back to his room, and sat silent, forever, so we wished. he left us, and i learned long days, and drank a glass of water in the morning, always.

train

i watched out the window as parts of it all were moving by
at the time i was attempting to not be waiting
the image playing across the pock-marked window became real, was actually real
moving through time and space made cycles and spirals out of the pictures

new and shiny buildings, older ones, a burned out empty shack
a highway of bright shiny cars, a junkyard
a child, a business suit, an old man, dust
a vicious struggle against the passage of time

i sat relaxed and rumbled through the miles
but the fight to not be waiting was violent
i arrived drained and emaciated,
dreaming of dreaming anything just to be sleeping
having failed the struggle and most attentively waited
and observed the passing of centuries from a speeding steel box
and thought, how long the day, how short the year