We don’t travel in the same
circles but we travel in circles
around and around the parts
we know…avoiding the shadows
when our swooping paths
of movement of intention
…when we come across occupy
inhabit the same air for a
minute an hour drinks or
dinner for the purpose of
knowing finding seeking the
end of reserving that side
of the bed from the emptiness
like a cloud of smoke hovering
where I want her to be…I wonder
sometimes—not always but
sometimes after—if she even
met me because I ask I talk I
look for motion for a gesture
toward believing and she
says yes says the words, has
the right movements until we
walk away…this was fun, this
was fun I like you let’s do this
again and I’ll call, I’ll text and then
I do and do again and there is
heavy silence sucking the air
from the moment and maybe
maybe…maybe there is a reply
that I am wonderful, I am amazing
I am all the things I should be
…except right…and I want to ask
but can’t—she’s gone, a deleted
text entry; why not say no no no
then, say it when fresh when
the knife and the expectation
would speed the pain…why
wait what changes what is the
thing that makes now so
different from then and I wish
I knew but it is NYC and that is
what she does and does
and does

You can’t fix people, no band aids
no salves no cold compress on souls
on broken hearts you can’t fix what
you can’t see feel only know though
words through watching the sad
sad show we call living we call life
You can be there be here in this little
moment this time this infinitesimal
place you can be who you are, the
person that knows that has that is the
link between what was before and
what is now and remind and memorialize
the single minutes the sparse seconds
of thinking when thoughts dreams
ideas knew nothing of today of now
You can be the bridge across the last
minute to the next one…the one that
hurts that tears that rips to shreds the
past, that denies the existence of love of
happy of new and improved…of what
we all think; that it won’t change, it
won’t evolve revolve into something
else when we all think…we do, we do…
that happiness depends and counts
on us never changing having and
holding forever the dream of who we
are smiling beaming glancing with that
sparkle that glint in eyes that knowing
look of love…of love…of love now
gone like the minutes seconds day
years weeks that the person you want
to need to have to fix sees only and
always…

We may wake up everyday thinking of
our lives meaning something, are something
special different apart from the fullness
of humanity, the breadth of living across
this planet, we may believe in strength
individuality as a moniker, a means
to an end we may slide across linen into
living we call productive days thinking
thinking thinking that the little single cell
organism we represent in the whole of
it all is more more more than the synthetic
dreams we’ve just exited lead us to believe

you may disregard that feeling now

Dreams we’ve just exited lead us to believe
it all is more more more than the synthetic
organism we represent in the whole of
thinking thinking that the little single cell
living we call productive days, thinking
to an end, we may slide across linen into
individuality as a moniker, a means…
this planet; we may believe in strength
of humanity, the breadth of living across
special different apart from the fullness,
our lives meaning something, are something
we may wake up everyday thinking of

In the many little instances, the minutes the
hours the seconds between here and now
I walk…across this grey and amazing city
across the idea that we are here, and here
and here but always moving always an
instantaneous apparition a ghost between
the solid and the real

I touch your face with waiting fingers, with
simple silence I watch the traced lines
across your skin across the street I see
the light change—white man now—to red
hand then and in that flicker, that small
moment of hovering sadness, I am nowhere
but the place I can be

White man, red hand…tell me when to stop
and go…there is too much of nothing, now,
between us and the path, clouded obstructed
dim and uninviting but not impassable yet,
not washed away by pounding tides by
inexorable wind and the beating pressure of
tomorrow’s thirst and hunger

Reconciling this moment against the timed
absence of knowing, I am wilted and folded;
my emotions, the scent of my distrust pervading
I watch and take myself too seriously yet once
again…adding a little more nothing to the
already full space around me, my fingers trace
lines on a face all but gone away

I said goodbye with these fingers, with the
tracing of the words I sealed the moment,
captured that instant when ghost became
real, became solid became the idea that what
was will not ever be…and like the stop and go
across intersections, I am merely waiting now
for the white man

She walks in summer in the
sweeping cold of December
she feels sun breeze the soft
touch of warm sea on skin on
the edge of the moment she
is summer in her bones her
eyes see nothing but the July
sky small stars and big ideas

She is, she was

She grabs dreams from inner
hours minutes seconds as we
live in cold daylight, in frigid
spaces between what we think
and what we want when we
want nothing that we have
now…she wants all that she
ever has…always in summer

She is, she was

She waits while living while
time slides past on oiled skin in
her mind the sun never sets
always on the horizon, on her
mind in December in the cold
of living she knows, she knows
what she has inside, a moment
held by soft determination

She is, she was

She sings the song of forever
of white sand and touching skin 
touching a blue blue sky as it 
bends down to kiss to hold to
caress to create the moment
held so close so ardently hers
she knows the hard edge of
December and…

…she is, she was…

I want you to know
that I don’t ever want
to be the sad the shallow
the negative image, the
opposite of believing…
I want to know and know
well deeply completely
of love the force the
dream the reality that
lay like air…a shadow of
the cold snow just
another winter across 
shoulders minds and
waiting for you I want to 
know that the beginning
is nearer than the end
…or not…but I want what
I want and thinking feeling
having aside I want to be
the being, see the seeing,
have the having with you
in you around you I want
all that I can never have
and have what I never
want with you with you
with you I want to love
and be loved but wanting
isn’t enough, I know I
know and am happy to
know that wanting is never
enough…that being is
all that is required and
being with you around
you…in you is all that
I want

I am we are the amalgamation of everything
I have we have
touched
smelled
heard
had
loved
lost
fucked
killed
ate
and it culminates in this moment, this exact
precise nanosecond which—when I we put
it against the light for comparison—tells me
us the inescapable conclusion reality state is
I am we are
temporary

I am we are happy and I am we are sad and
I am we are full of all of this and the emptiness
of it as I we live…I am we are nothing but more
than that and more than this, knowing
it is true and a lie and yes and no 
I am we are
temporary

Odd feeling…300 feet in the air, laying
naked on a bed, grey linen, Manhattan in a
grey sky through floor to ceiling glass, I
watch myself breath beat perspire aspire to
better things…a few years ago I would be
levitating and not knowing
I am we are
temporary

That process journey path toward awareness
of my our instantaneousness, my our strobe
flash across darkened space was unkind was
forceful strident and completely thoughtless
it neither knew or cared or could imagine
me us any other way and told me us
I am we are
temporary

I look at people on
the street the subway
in my closed-lid wayward
stray glance in parks on
sidewalks I see
heaviness, a weight
they carry; this life
this existence sometimes
sadness on shoulders
sometimes like they’re
dragging a chain of
guilt regret…all struggling
against life, always against
what they don’t know
what they think they
know…what they want
to believe when believing
is all that relieves the
stress the strain friction
the burning dragging hurt
that slows and stops
dreams…and I silently
push myself toward a way
a method an idea how to
help but the gulf that
separates that fills the
emptiness between is
impervious…it seems
impenetrable from the
misalignment of what
I think and can say…and
what they can hear
and believe when it is
simply a glance a look
a moment in passing…

Buy the ticket, take the ride
release the demon that lives inside
go someplace where you can’t hide
buy the ticket…take the ride

We’re all heading to the same destination
on different roads by different means
wearing looks of conformity or strangeness
because nothings is at all like it seems

Buy the ticket, take the ride
release the demon that lives inside
go someplace where you can’t hide
buy the ticket…take the ride

Without thinking we know what we know
that without having, we’re all just the same
bereft of disbelief we continue the journey
in some cases simply separated by a name

Buy the ticket, take the ride
release the demon that lives inside
go someplace where you can’t hide
buy the ticket…take the ride

Death is inevitable but hopefully not today
we sit on our ideals like hands in pockets
thinking always thinking our way out of this
going from feet to horses to cars to rockets

Buy the ticket, take the ride
release the demon that lives inside
go someplace where you can’t hide
buy the ticket…take the ride

One last attempt is what we always say
but it’s never quite so easy or cut and dried
the demon that drives us toward an open grave
is sometimes the only thing we have inside

Buy the ticket, take the ride
release the demon that lives inside
go someplace where you can’t hide
buy the ticket…take the ride

Buy the ticket, take the ride
buy the ticket…take the ride

At the intersection between
what we believe and what is
real/solid/here and there…
lay a small lie we tell ourselves
a tiny fabrication, a microcosm
of our world that we cannot
live without

A tiny peek into the future, just
seconds ahead—just a moment
of thought—is the essence of
who we are even though we
can’t ever admit to ourselves
that truth…that thing we can’t
see without seeing

The lie we tell ourselves without
knowing we do…or who we are…
is that here is better than there
because (and only because)
we are here and not there, we
are motionless powerless
we think

The safety of loneliness is in
that lie, that tiny fraction of time
while we yearn urge and are
propelled toward love sex
companionship and the graceful
envelope we imagine
in our minds

The intersection, the moment, the
minute by minute play that we
attend to…all formulated to keep
us looking seeking searching for
the hidden meaning; the one we
believe is us