Am I happy?
Am I verging on dissolution?
Where is the difference?

(the impermanence of the personal pronoun)

~

We are entombed,
hurtling. Cylindrically hurtling. Geometrically.
We’re all going to fucking die

because we cannot say what we mean to say.

The woman I buy coffee from,
the women sitting across from me.
I want you to strangle me, she begs
wrap your hands around my neck

~

Enervating nearness. To touch, be touched.
For there are limits to what we can say.
Thresholds of color we must obfuscate:

sky before dusk, and after, curious,
and laden with horror, which we endure.
There are limits to what our bodies can know.

To deepness, masquerading as the heart
tumultuous sea, the tenebrous sky,
the abrasion of letters on a grave.

Not essential, she says.
Then what? I ask.

When morning sings, and sometimes it is grey as grief,
but often limpid and loquacious, dulcet with sun
that is some quality more than bright. When you are listening
to the inconsequential birds, living without names or
without love. Without beauty, our great lodestar, our human
philosophy
when you are suddenly outside language.

~

Breathing, breathing. Still breathing.
Scent before sight, its newness, his newness.
Me happy for you, your hollow.

(on the city train; you with your new, now
old, lover)