Somebody That I Used to Know

'And the days are not full enough'

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

Mute

Begin simply -
place a plunger
on the end of a trumpet
to quell the sound.
One by one, the players 
forget the importance of big. 

Soon, all books are banned
bras reluctantly put back on.
Rosa goes to the back of the bus.
Little by little, everything turns
back in on itself until we are all
at the place we fought so hard
not to be.

We sit in the dark
left reading nothng -
and wonder who 
struck the first match.

Epoch

My hair is loose job jar empty. I can't stop Venus from rising the wax and wane of moon a wild sea from rolling against a stubborn shore. My knees ache from kneeling to what confession? I will not grow old in my sins.

Time Ticks the Light Longer

There was an odd quality
to the light that day
how it fell through the window
changing the blue of her cup. 

She sat, newspaper folded
wondered why people turned. 
That sweet little girl in Indiana
in her pink nightgown, dismembered 
left to forever, such a long time.

Or how she had found out
he had lied to her for years.

Odd, how the light changes 
something as simple as colour.
How we are all deemed to die
different deaths.

Carnival

Few can see to the end of the tunnel of love the entry beckons heart-shaped

framing an empty void had it been labeled “Haunted House” half the fair-goers would politely decline citing the sudden need for candy floss the brave

would clamber into the small cars expecting to emerge from the other side

half out of their minds

anticipating that somewhere along the line a man in a mask taunting

a chain saw would roar into the moment or that severed arms and heads

would drop lifeless from the sky fingerless toothless

There would be screaming -

and plenty of it

How then, did she coax you into the tunnel?

You - with the logical mind, practical life?

Did she look at you with her goal-post eyes?

Calculate possibilities into tiny fractions,

subtractions, additions?

Did the car rattle and shake as you clasped hands and entered as fearless

as the guests in the Haunted House? Did she kiss you with her mouth open

as the tunnel gaped, swallowing you quickly?

Cobweb hair, goose-bump flesh, a strange sensation filling your belly

your heart talking in beats assuring your mind

No sign of severed arms, heads, or men with chainsaws.

No indication that the ride was faulty.

No chance of a refund at the other end.

Just the creak and sway of the car,

teetering precariously on the edge

of something unseen.

The mind a blank a magic realism painting where the grass is too green

the sky too blue her red dress too perfectly creased see through in the sunlight

nobody mentioned the tunnel of love would be so narrow lonely dark the fifty

percent chance of emerging as two instead of one but you knew it would feel good

so good to get lost in there for even a little while.

When the ride finally came to a stop, you reeled out of the car as if emerging

from a fighter plane that turned upside-down with a G8 force the bile rising

in your throat but you swallow it back denying the need for help your legs

wobbly and unstable she was no longer holding your hand

The crowd stared as if you were a freak in the big tent and you tried to smile

put on your best front your mask dripping with the sweat of denial

She was no longer holding your hand

Bonaparte

A powerful star
not to be followed

too many places
his heart always broken

perpetually pumping
driven by need

it takes strength to say
no

go, I will not be conquered 
even if it would only take one word

Horizon

earth-home

sky-home

a sea too distant

to close

a circle that separates

noon from midnight

in the corner of my eye

the split face

of a magnified moon

an illusion of ships

you arriving

always

A love like that

A love like that

Hafiz

Even
After
All this time
The sun never
says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that.

It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Goodbye in Slow Motion with Those Trees Waving Back

As if these words could alter wind's lucid course
And make the trees wave hello again;


As if the wind had something new to bless,
Confess; that, finally, today's losses were palpable, explicable

Even; as if there were a reason for this self-pity
To descend again like shade

From the maples and lilacs and palms,
The sweet peach and lacquered locust,

Those cherries, chestnuts, and oranges .... It has to be

All of them, all of them
                                   lining those streets whose names I loved:

Calle de la Bonanova, Rue Descartes, Aldstadter Ring,
And further still, Coates and Sharon, which aren't

In Barcelona, Paris, or Prague, but from Sharon Hill, from childhood,
Places that don't exist anymore.

As if childhood were some tourist destination to visit
Off season, walking those sun-stroked sidewalks,

Sipping wine in the street-side cafés, saying hello to those
I'll never know in a tongue I used to know.

As if anyone's history were myth, and that myth an unconditional love
For loss. As if sorry didn't exist,

Any need for sorry.

If only childhood would tell the wind where to go,
If only it had a home.

If only this poem could hold childhood in its hands—
All gnarl-knuckled, chapped, blood-cracked—long enough

To say goodbye, to the bartender in Prague
Who was from Brooklyn, who talked with me awhile

About what home can't mean to him anymore, who got lost
Hiking in the Alpines and "ended up in here somehow, never left.... "

As if childhood's a place never left and never found, never
Said goodbye to;

As if that mattered now, as if there were time enough
To say goodbye to childhood

With all the slowness loss demands;

As if loss and childhood were distinct.


As if there were someone to talk with, walk and smoke with.

Besides, after awhile, we'd feel a need to sleep,
This me and that you I once was,

Our skin chilled a little, turning to gooseflesh a little, swept
By an August breeze weaving its way through the trees.

It doesn't matter, though, does it?
You've already begun to name the trees for yourself.

But feel that?

The trees are waving, too.

I'd like to teach you the names of these trees, to confess
How much I need to miss you to finish this off.

Alexander Long