We are following a blue jay –
the air dripping off him trails, spooling off
behind his wingtips carving the shallow sky –
Each wingtip dipped in ink, dragging its
calligraphy behind him.

We glide in tow below, up the gentle grade,
The swirling ribbons of vapor hanging over us –
Smoky helixes left suspended by seconds-old barrel rolls.
The wisps of cloud – stagnant gray streamers –
expand slowly like sponges breathing in.

Our balance is pleasant, flooding back so comfortably.
We have always known the glide,
and had simply forgotten;
Things were happening without us –
The world galloped by.
We mistook the sound for applause.
The world was poking us.

The euphoria rotted –
We came to our senses.
We are making our own.

Now, we are tilted just right.
Leaning forward we lead with our throats
our toes like tailfeathers behind us
raking the air just above the dirt.
Following the blue jay’s jet stream
We glide –
You, a ray parting currents
I, a ghost parting lives.

Rain on concrete
stubbornly reflects the sky above
Hard to describe without saying gray

bus brakes whine, the sidewalk hums
the city has a motor
I’m waiting for it to stall
seated in a glass shelter across the Atlantic ocean
I wonder how much mercury is in the rain here
and in the cold sweat fogging up my skin
it’s no use
nothing evaporates
but all the air is soaked

Urban steam rising from urban manholes
Euro symbols littering flat surfaces
How can a place smell so clean
and so dirty at the same time?

A week would do me good here
a big window and a dark room
with a ratty couch and a girl sitting on it
with headphones the size of doughnuts

some black tea and cigarettes and too many
books to count.
Some time to sterilize my soul
with industrial strength melancholy
and auditory art.
Some independence and old sneakers
whose laces always seem to be wet.

No raindrop ever falls in the wrong place.

Your voice told us about Philadelphia and things
other people had seen. The microphone only amplified
the creaky waverings of your nervous throat.
Your other hand, now in your pocket
now out of your pocket
has been flush with the ground
and pressed against glass
and wrapped around candles
not complaining about the wax running down their knuckles.

You deserve composure; your words are deliberate.
I know that you have lived more than I have,
if such things can be tapped out on an abacus.
Your only duty is to stand straight,
look down and slide those beads over,
one
by
one.

There is no Fourth Wall, Remy.
You are saturated with stage lights
and we are all your friends.
We don’t know if your fingernails are too long
or your mouth is as dry as dandruff
or how long it took you to decide which poem to read.
And you don’t need to tell us. All you need to tell us
is that life is like a poem.
It doesn’t have to rhyme
but it’s got to end.

You were running out of the house
with a pot full of fire water
an inverse Prometheus.
You whisper-shouted
shit! shit! shit!
as you hustled on your tip toes through the snow
holding out before you the bucket of boiling flame,
then heaved, arms outstretched,
dropping the frightening mess
as far away as you could.

It landed without a splash in a snowbank.
I think the universe must have been
a little unsure as to how to react;
Who should consume whom?
Fire and snow and oil and water,
all roiling together, hissing like
angry, never ending snakes.

she’s a muted piano
and she can ring out every once in awhile
but I hesitate to push the keys hard -
that calloused ivory
should be tickled

and she sings out so smooth
so gentle
with a four note chord
I can sit there for hours
with my fingers heavy

but she’s no interlocutor

I am afraid of the scene that keeps popping up in my head
of you with a baby on your hip with my eyes and your eyes
and the sink running and your hands full
and the flower on the window sill dying
and my tie thin and woolen and
you asking me for a hand
and instead I step up behind you and
give you a kiss on the side of your neck
and your hair gets caught in my lips and
I blow a raspberry
and the child on your hip blows one back
and I smile and turn off the faucet.

This water tastes like rust,
I thought. Coughing, I stole
your attention, and with my eyes,
as I yanked at the air,
I crammed words through your
sockets, that I knew
would get caught in your throat.

Indecision is a nervous dog,
eyes like the plastic saucer in
a rousing game of air hockey,
or a restless somnambulist
shuffling from doorway to doorway
back and forth across the hall.

I held a fistful of broken glass
each shard an angled glance I had received.
Putting my hands together as if in prayer,
I began to rub.
Either like an evil villain watching a plan come together,
or a cold vagrant huddled round a trash can campfire,
I don’t know what I was going for;
a sewn up mirror or a pile of sand.

What I got was a mirror -
a Frankenstein of reflections
whispering to me in grunts and whimpers.
I was silent, listening to the labored breaths
of the mirror, the gravelly crackling
of its flakes moving independently,
rubbing up against each other, gritty.

It spoke up, and rattled out something wise.
“There are certain opportunities here
that do not exist there.”
I breathed hot on the mosaic of silver
and wiped with my elbow, my sleeve
snagging edges here and there.

Micah leaked onto the carpet.
The mirror wheezed as if in pain.
“You will stay,”
it said. The metallic sutures dissolved
and once again I was carrying a collection
of shattered glares.

Your beauty is like that of an oil spill.
Iridescent black, the shimmering rainbow
melting into darkness.
Poured onto the surface, spreading just
the way we’ve come to expect.
After it’s been slathered on to the
gray textured quietude that is comfortably familiar
nobody really knows what to do
except whisper and stare
terrified and mesmerized
at the slimy sheen catching the moonlight
in all the wrong ways.

Like the sound of a watch wrapped in cotton
I hear you with my bones.

Cracking my knuckles beneath the water lapping my shoulders
the sound doesn’t reach my eardrums but enters me anyway.

And walking through an empty street,
my past tugs at me sleeve.

The cold weather wedges slimy clouds under my skin
Foot steps drowning in the cough of the night.

In the same breath I wonder how I let you go
and how I ever fell in love with you in the first place.

the blood in my arms
feels like cold water mixed with
electricity

I see you every day, almost smiling,
And you see me, and remember when we
went to school together, and you do smile
and wave and I shiver but I smile too.
I look upon you like nothing else;
light of a different color swirls around you.
Reluctant hope and reluctant fear
boil in my belly because I’m not sure of you
and I’m even less sure of me. And even
stroking these keys I am nervous.
Because now it is real and not just
another figment of my overactive imagination.

You appear – at lunchtime – far too often
I gave up believing in coincidences a long time ago.
What is your significance?

I have dreams of you that
startle me.
My stomach is confused, like when I’m on a boat in a dark room
My compass spins

And I don’t need fanciful images and
beautiful words when I think of you
Because the image of you that glides around
is always smiling, and always
close.
In my dreams we’re always sure
My heart slips down and beats with a growl
because new passion is stronger than anything I can remember.

My skull’s interior is carved with your name
in cursive letters, long and elegant.
Your penmanship impresses me
every time my eyes roll back.

Let’s drink wine and play Scrabble
and listen to the music we really like
and not listen to what we feel each
other would enjoy. Let’s share our
actual personalities, beliefs, the things
we say when we are by ourselves.
Let’s walk in the woods, holding hands
and talk about the possibilities of other
universes. Let’s have comfortable silences
and not worry about awkward situations
let’s listen to each other breathing
and watch movies neither of us have seen.
I’ll let your head put my shoulder to sleep
and finally be happy with the company I keep.

your hand knocked my hand away
and said, here
and your fingers danced for me
marching past each other
skipping steps and halfsteps
skimming their heels along the ivory
as they swung

I leaned back into your chest
and said, oh.

I was overcome
by the smell of bleach and hot rubber
and the way the hallway seemed to stretch
before me.

I leaned on a sign with two arrows and braille
one knee locked and one knee crooked
resting one foot on the other
I swallowed.
Everything was clean.