I knew you

I cynically say that I knew you,
As if I believed that I could capture the radiance of what will come,
And hold it against the darkness.

"I know you", I joked,
On that long lackadaisical afternoon our bodies glistening,
baking in the lustrious, overexposed innocence.

We stood before the child whose lackadaisical eyes blurred us into one
His belly swollen, as if to make room for the coffin bearing a world never to come.
We sipped lattes and nibbled on reduced fat coffee cake.
You said, "I didn't know", but you did.

You look away, bobbing your head to Bob Dylan and the Dixie Chicks, with a skip in your step as if to say, "happiness is a delicate matter. One must be smart and lucky to obtain it. The only inevitablilty is that it will be lost".

"I have known you", I agreed. Nodding my head and watching your blissful departure from the corner of my eye.

"Yes, once", you say crushing your paper coffee cup, the black liquid slopping over your wrist and forearm. It burns.

After the reticence, choose your words carefully.

A Little Raisin

"I am not quite sure what you mean by 'being on the brink of form."
"It doesn't exist, it is a mirage." -Jason Snyder

The proud and the naive pop reasons like raisins.
Raising the call of inspiration, a reaching treble
Which uses clauses from the book that nods and claws and routes
The crowd of loud patrons distilling verbs like "cousin"
And adjectives like "me" into a spoiled whine
"See a brother or mother who might have sprung from a
fictive and sequential fount", they will say.
"Hear a dip and dial, a trial by which we are saved", they will say.

Say, say, say it! Say that mirrors listen and microphones feel.

I was so sure

"Dig, dig deep, when you come and show me your shells and stones
I will smile. I will be moved by the wonder in your eyes.
I will assure you, correct you, cushion your momentary lapse of certainty." -Procheta

I can't write poetry anymore. I used to be so wise, uncovering the secrets of lies and rights of hands to be washed a thousand times. I can't write poetry anymore, it waxes fake and produced. Comparisons seem unauthentic and derived. Metaphors used and recycled. Only gibberish seems original...al;kdsjflkahga0w);akldsjfafa;lkdsjfakfcjasvn[oasfidhb[ ;aosdkjfgl alkdsfj;lakj
I can't write poetry anymore.

Lately...

"Every current relativity is trivial and a drunken giggle comes out through an eternal euphoric smile. " -Emmanual (Jason) Snyder

Something I wrote a long time ago...

I’ve been on the verge lately
I’ve been thinking lately
I was sitting down of late
yesterday...to me, though I was late
in my search for myself lately
and lately i’ve been thinking
“How come it took so long to find you”
much, much too late to waste thinking about a wasted life
spent without the company of you...to the moon
where distance might be seen as an inch between us
i think i’ve been on the moon lately.

The Pendulum

"And we can't help but notice that we're apart
through time and space we're brutally divided
though i've read in God's Words that they're not even real,
i squint through my prayer and i still can't see you."
-Juliet Wing

Lately, I've forgotten what it is like to be sincere. I wonder if I ever knew what it was. I feel humbled by the sheer impossibility of it, because I feel this or that in a moment and nothing at all in another. I get angry or disappointed in others when they fail to connect with me, yet I push away or ignore just as readily as anyone. It seems to me that the cruelty of borders is our anchor in this world. Nothing is more disorienting than grief for those who die, because I can feel the separtation between myself and them lift and all that is left is a hallowed void where connection to them comes like breath; invisible and primordial. The most sincere moments have existed for me in the recession of drilling grief and when the clarity of this emptiness passes everything seems so allusive and pointless.
I fear what must be done. I fear what must be done. I am afraid of what will never come.