escalator

Like our childhood selves,
We climbed down the up escalator
in the hotel lobby, together.
I called it nostalgic; romantic.
You called it existential, seeing
our reflection in the window
as we walked without moving -
like Sisyphus working, traveling
and going no where. But that's
where verisimilitude ended.
After all, they are all wrong
about our lives, aren't they?
The churches, the parents, the friends
no longer friends. We were going
somewhere, and moving - my identity
traveling with you to a certain
hopeful future.
And I turned, there on the
escalator, and held on to you,
giving in to my identity,
giving in to the stars, giving
myself to you and that
moving staircase, taking me
up, up, up, further inside you,
toward my hopeful future, and all
the things I never could, or
let myself, become.

3/29

proverbial gods

I feel disembodied at times.
Floating outside of myself,
but only ever on the inside, as
being outside my self I'd have
to prove to more than corporeal
existence. That's the conundrum
and haunting paradox, of feeling
God with me and praying to Him,
to Her, to Them, all while
embracing my humanist self
and denouncing religion.
Whose religion can't I denounce?
Can I say I've seen the light of
spiritual non-existence
and proselytize it?
Spread to those who's spirits are real?
But then - there's more to me than flesh.
There's more to me than "mind"
and "minding" - none of us with answers,
we all the questioning, or should.
We can't see the world unless
we see it critically. We can't
know ourselves unless we see
ourselves critically. And so logos
created the world after all, and we
all bow before the power of logic,
and the proverbial Word.
And if we bow to words, and master them
ourselves,
does that make us all gods, after all?

- 3/6

"even if you cannot hear my voice, I am right beside you"

Your absence is a phantom pain,
in my side, my chest, my arms.
When I close my eyes and my nerves
send signals, like radio frequencies,
bouncing back to me the intimation
that you aren't beside me, no matter
how hard I try to pretend, or in
the pretending, I trick myself under
closed lids into believing you
are actually there, and I open my eyes
to an empty chair, an empty space -
my heart leaps outside my chest,
through my throat, my eyes, my mouth,
stretching its arms into the void
you are supposed to occupy. Failing,
always, to find you where I cannot
see you. This is how it is with death
and separation -
Seeing you out of the corner of my eye,
in a crowd, peering down from a window,
sitting at a table in the library, as I
glance down an aisle of books I
happen to pass. I've felt these
pains before, created by the cleaving and
the residue of memory - our bodies do
such things to us, when we're in love.
Were I never to hold you again, I'd still
see you everywhere, especially under
those same closed eyelids I clench now
when, so very close, I knew if I stretched
out my hand it would find yours. Even
if you were not there when I opened
my eyes.

2/15

Molds

My ex-wife let mold grow on the roses
I gave her. They were for her birthday,
And she hasn't moved them from the corner
in the dining room of the apartment
we once shared. Living things seem to
waste away here, and though I'm sorry
for her and her wilted flowers, I'm not
sorry I left. She told me not to be sorry.

Today I brought her a smoothie while
she was at the hospital. I took
the stairs back down from the seventh floor,
following a trail of Sour Patch Kids left,
one by one, on the stairs by some young
hansel or gretel showing a way out
for those who might be lost here.

People often get lost in the molds of former
selves. And former apartments, like
labrynths, grow daunting as hospital
stairwells. Leaving the corners of
rooms that I miss should not hold regret,
but the phantom pains that come with
losing a limb - only to find new limbs
growing in their places, following paths
laid down by younger, more innocent minds
to prove that we were never really lost

2/8 (last stanza 7/12)

unfolded

Remember when we were younger, and
we used to think our teachers lived
at school? I always pictured oversized
desks where they could fold themselves
up at night, packed nicely in among
their books and pens and apples. This
is how I envision you - folded up inside
my cell phone, your voice coming from
somewhere among the buttons and wires.
Occasionally I'll open up the
back and peer in, wondering it you're
really there - longing for the day
when you unfold yourself from within
and come to me. You will unfold to me,
only to be folded again into my arms,
and I'll no longer have
only your words to keep me warm
on days that I am feeling lonely.

songs my mother gave me?

I decided that, for my mother's side of the family, I may put together a group of my poetry, about my mother, and her passing, and give them to my aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I think they will appreciate the sentiment, and something tells me it might help some of them push through and do the moving on that is so necessary in times like this. I plan on titling my collection "Songs my mother gave me," cliche as it sounds, only because I hammered out the following introductory poem (and I welcome constructive critique - is the meaning clear? does the metaphor work?). It is slightly cheesy, perhaps, but I think it serves its purpose, and my family will appreciate it:

To the Reader:

The time to sing is now -
Our grief slowly lifting, the tears painted over
with all the smiling faces of those she left behind;
It's true, she's gone - but
when the time comes, we could all lament
that we, too, were plucked early from this life,
forgetting that the most important purpose for us here
is simply teaching other people how to sing.
And my mother, she taught me many songs.
These are songs my mother gave me.

a poem of silence a la e.e.cummings

m (fa (words) il) e