I turn to these with some sort of relief.
I would never want to be in the rat race like that.

they, willing to risk everything – name, future,
for a pay check, and a stab at a larger functioning machine.

they defy the rules of simple living.

I on the other hand am an over-educated american,
defying the rules of the Jones. A common servant, mainly to my
own interests. I once knew a man who gave up success
to live his life the way he wanted. I admired him greatly for this.

To give up suits for snow
or bonuses for boats.
There is something very valubale about living life simply,
or simply making time to do the things you want.

I come here on my knees. Facing you will not be jealous.
Because I come to you with history,
and it is our histories that are submerged,
like dreams, forever haunting us.
You drank me, you ate me, enjoyed my taste, savored it.
Bit by bit I was consumed by you.
Your ghost pinned both my hands above my head
wanting to bite down hard through all,
reaching history in my flesh.
It was not with care or anger, but with knowing you could.

I will not care, or beg for it either. I will know only the good.

Relish the good and I will blame indifference.

I will blame fresh eyes, because I know how sublime it is to be looked at with fresh eyes.
I will look back in the distance,  and see in what I have left in you,
my battered pleasure will be soaked in self-confidence.
My memory will not be tarnished,
and that is the difference between us.

One year the snow compressed so much, there was shifting,
a need for more supports,
two by fours inbetween beams.
It shows you how the weather can change a structure.

we can barely walk through the snow,  it’s so deep.

I REALIZE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR WORKING HARD!
I REALIZE I LOVE THE DOG FOR CHASING TENNIS BALLS!

The ice is extraordinary in the sunlight.

In the dust and incense
Rickshaw exhaust
or the burning coconuts
and pots of chai tea

i can smell you
in steaming momo soups, dosas
ginger and lemon
in the muddy pathways
with the snow melting
in holy dharamasala.

I can smell you
from the sulfur- pools of  Vashiech
bathing with buckets of the hot water
after being the sickest i’ve ever been
eating rice and diluted cocoa cola
lonely watching rooftops.

I can smell you
in the gutter
of a muslim district
where they burned plastic
where you could see the looms
through the doors
and the bitter sari dyes steamed
purple, cerulean, mango,
the green raw silk.

I can smell you
the pakora vendor
marigold chains
and salty air of the Indian ocean
of chickens and sweat
gulab juman, sweet on my tongue.

will curl up into a ball
and turn my face away
from the sun

***

will leave this page
sitting half-empty for
five days

crumpling every letter
that has been written.
It is here I decide
I will not give you any.

***

will watch my hands
fumble through all the
humid grey hours

through all of the
empty chores that pull me
from one day to
the next

the dishes
the laundry
the small mercies
of a new space

***

it’s here that
i will admit all of my
failures

distract myself
against you
against your poker face
disdain

it is here I will convince myself
of the monumental mistake
you have made

not just mine.

***
here I will measure the distance
between us
in hours of recollection

the time that is spent without
it spans
inches, miles, universes.

To begin,
with  skin,
shimmery scales
and the
pectoral fin pushed back against
your hand.
I am a caught fish.
You are the boat seat.
You are my water.
You are my hook.

something should have been said
gutters clogged, in these reaches of a sizzled summons
branches aloft as scission.

I turn quiet.
the lure makes a leaf.
restlessness.

The barter of body for mind,
how sculpting with fingers
is carving out places.
the trees are burning.

this is. the and. and the big singing autumn wind.
this is. about the seizing. and what allows the sum of a murmur. this is. about null. about all. a bough falls.
all is dying with color exhaling into coldness. this is. inarticulating.

Moaning on my skin is full of horizon,
light on dried grass
I exit into autumn.

Do you remember the squeek of the screen door into the red room?
creeeeeek.
My excitement that you were coming through
done with work.
We slept hot in red;
a tiny little space
the color of what was.

Abandoned hives,
The skin of a bear
hit by a car.
Her rusted out shanty
With a  radiator.
A skull placed perfectly in a tree.

The walls and sap lines
Show the lines
That curve of the body
of property,
between here there is Hartley hill
where an old lover lived.
I’ve walked clear
to Nukems field,
wanting to make love
but afraid of trespassing;
wearing boxer shorts, hiking boots
and an old hunting jacket.
It was close to four miles
For the collapse of a pull-out couch,
His grandfather was dying,
We drank lots of whiskey
Making sad love.
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­____________________________________________
We drank whiskey while we cooked
Made fires with our hands
Attempted scalloped potatoes
And found a dead mouse.
Drove here to sit in front of a fire for two days.
It’s a good idea when you don’t have a fire normally.
You screamed out in to the night, I DON’T FUCKING CARE!!!!!
About family, inheritance, living a life outside of wealth–
You asked me if you thought humans could just be self-sustaining,
I said no, not without breaking their backs.
In the morning you didn’t wake me,
I asked you why, because the sky was so faultless
Orange-purple smeared the windows,
You said, I didn’t want to disturb you.
During the day we slept and looked at old playboys.

____________________________________________

I’ve cultivated gardens on this hill.
Tobbaganed my heart out,
Cut wild rhubarb.
Hypnotized by kileidescopes of green,
frozen in the trees,
waking to crackling eggs
snowblind, young and sexual.
Deer dead and hanging,
Scrubbing potatoes.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­They moved her from Grace Cottage
saying there wasn’t much progress,
she was taking morphine.

You moved her to a nursing home on Monday.
She built this place with her own hands,
you cried hard on the phone,
I was waiting tables—trying to find words
trying to understand you and your mother;
how you cooked them meals when she was sick,
even though she beat you when you were a child.
You spent your childhood on this sad hill,
Away from the world
before they had people being paid to take care of them
you cared for them.
You sob the way I sobbed when I was a teenager.

Life on this hill is quiet,
There isn’t a sound unrecognizable,
I wish for its silence today.
The rotting roof,
Buckets of sugar sap from the line,
The snags of childhood nostalgia

Closed my curtains,
let you in to a place that should be a tree
deeply rooted in some ground freeze.
A warm mouth to the navel,  an earth
hibernal, where I am not wanting to peck at the dead grass.

Yet, I find that I am flapping from branch to branch
trying to get between limbs
and there is no way release to wind
or a deep chirping.

Taking morning flight was never all that loney
in a new mapskin of sky, ruffled feathers
Where we are just feeding like a wild birds in winter
and still famished from the seed left out by strangers.