W
I
T
H
I
N
endless space
in tiny explosions of gasoline
my consciousness hardens into a wall.
I AM SEPARATE
from plum blossoms and mountains: 
aching teeth become movies
as I grow
young again.

Dark hair
and eyebrows
S
W
I
R
L
in delighted delusion
BIG MEMORIES OF PLEASURE
enwrap a mind
as substantial

as

a
drift

of 
snowflakes

onto a warm hood;
and less intelligent
than the thin
black
spider in the morning sink
before breakfast time.

Your smile is my kindness
and it thrills me

I 

HAVE

NEVER

BEEN 
SO 
REAL

before

Thy brow is girt, thy robe with gems inwove;
    And palaces of frost-work, on the eye,
    Flash out, and gleam in every gorgeous dye,
The pencil, dipped in glorious things above,
    Can bring to earth. Oh, thou art passing fair!
But cold and cheerless as the heart of death,
Without one warm, free pulse, one softening breath,
    One soothing whisper for the ear of Care.
Fortune too has her Winter. In the Spring,
    We watch the bud of promise; and the flower
    Looks out upon us at the Summer hour;
And Autumn days the blessed harvest bring;
    Then comes the reign of jewels rare, and gold,
    When brows flash light, but hearts grow strangely cold.

is like being burned up
in a twelfth-floor elevator.
Or drowned in a flipped SUV.

It’s like waking with scalpels 
arrayed on my chest.
Like being banished to 1983.

Having a fight with you 
is never, ever less horrid: that whisper 
that says you never loved me—

my heart a stalled engine
out the little square window.
Your eyes a white-capped black sea.