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lycanthrope
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sitting in a room,
across from each
other,
the distance is arranged
like furniture,
as if it must always
add up to the same number,
this can be moved close
if this is moved further away.
and her eyes move around
like equations
into what they fit,
but if they are less or more
than
they are of no use
they are glassed
or sidelong.
we talk as usual,
about the things
i cannot talk about to others,
because if they heard
where i stand,
they probably wouldn't
let me hear their problems
which are largely work related
or dealing with a spouse
who steals the remote control.
not that remote control isn't an issue.
and really, what are we that's so different,
still just two people
sitting in a room,
or else looking out at a sky
in which stars
seem to burn just like
one another,
are almost but not,
and are cruelly transfixed
in a softening or
hardening sky
velvet or tar
even constellations are
parallel all the way
to the universe
end or beginning.
but to know someone's
on your side,
to see someone who
would do what you do,
were they you.
or at least forgives what you forgive.
we both sit and wait for the moment
she takes off
her jacket
and her shoulders are bare.
smalltalk stops for a moment,
and we wait to see
what becomes of civilization
when faced
with catastrophic beauty,
pale monoliths,
polar ice caps.
because she is distant
she becomes the distant.
every city i have never visited.
the dapple in her thighs
is pinball ramp tokyo,
with its lanterns burning
kamikaze.
the brown in her breasts
is fertile valley.
world religions waiting to happen.
she becomes all distance,
the center of the universe
that is everywhere
that exerts its pull,
the inevitable,
everything that is not you.
the way some people see
their death over and over again
or dream the same dreams,
i see her face.
there is nothing else to go to,
fluctuations. half numbers
to her whole.
but romance itself is an incomplete word.
but we can talk about fathers and lost teenage years,
and this is perhaps
what all babytalk is.
disguising the twisting
root of your intentions
with one of that tree's
fruits, your desire
your desire at all costs
even protection and restraint.
and so even when we speak
our mind,
we soften any cynical lonliness
for solidarity.
we discuss our love lives,
it isn't really what's healthy, it's what feels good at some point.
because what is health
if it doesn't feel good.
and you freefall into another's center and it does feel good
and if they're going to be a crash,
a disappointing landing
that's them, because you gave.
and why would you ask for more,
when seemingly no one else does?
she laughs and looks up and look down, you do the same at strategically different rates,
and perhaps time elapsed it would look like some strange dance.
i wish the walls would fall away
and we'd be faced with the night
and pulled together.
and in the end the walls are gone.
she walks me to my car.
we embrace
and it feels like
driving home will
be that morning
full of light and new noises
when you forget good dreams
you wanted to keep.
it feels like my heart is becoming
real, and i am clutching it,
my own heart.
behind her the night sky is vast
but the vastness
cannot take away from the smallness,
i turn my eyes down
and choose her neck
her soft skin
passing my soft skin
boundries and forms
wishing they'd change.
i look back at the night sky
wishing the stars would shift
or be constantly moving,
on the same scale,
wishing two would accidentally
touch, end or begin.
i choose her neck,
it too a distant constellation
moving slow enough
to chart my life by.
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040617
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