this is it

i climbed up some mountain
you see, and i'd been struggling
for a long time on this one
as mountains can be like that.
i'd been struggling across the sea
and then I found I was suddenly there
with almost no effort (surely there
was effort, but I'd forgotten how
many boulders I'd tripped over).
And when I was there, I thought
the view would be better somehow
or no, that somehow I would be
changed, that I would be something
more than the sum of my parts,
a person who'd climbed.
I felt sort of ordinary, as though
what I really wanted was just to
be like everyone else and I wasn't
really sure why I wanted that so
badly. It wasn't anything to be ordinary
short of boring and I was boring and
I am probably going under again.

the test of patience
even if I
hold you in trust
hold me in trust
a million times I
want to say
to the stars at night
where are you?

medea killed her children
to break your heart.
i still don't know why
people identify with her.

i dreamed the dream
of the house, Shams,
the inside of my house,
which is in fact an apartment.
the interior had grown
dilapidated and was
falling apart from a fungus
that climbed up the walls
black and fierce,
pushing the drywall from
the inside out,
pieces of plaster falling
like large snowflakes.

love story

I am writing a love story
about myself, Shams,
and I am the protagonist,
or one of them.
Only we don't say that kind of thing,
can't call it a love story, because
he's too cool for all that, too cool for me,
too cool to tell me that he has me in
his eternity
just in case
he needs to break in case of
emergency.
Boys are careful like that.
In my storym
he is carving my name
into his blood,
rearranging his DNA, the plasma,
so that it buzzes in my presence,
sends chemicals in a flood
at just the simple thought of me.
And he can't stop that,
can't stop this urgency for me,
this scent in all things that is me-ness.
Love is such a forceful demoness,
and she has him pinned even if he
struggles against it.
My story is more about a
silly man.
In front of my eyes,
he puffs himself up and struts,
so that my heart beats,
not because I think he is great
but because he frightens me,
with this threat of this
callous indifference towards
a hundred different faces and people,
a small bead of 108.
Lies, love's first lies are understatements,
lies to oneself, lies to one's lover,
lies that one is infected,
a victim,
and yes, a simple word of mine
will soothe his sweaty brow,
send tension dissolving out
through his fingers, out through
his feet, out when he hears me
say what I know he carries
in him.
This is the story I'm writing Shams.
Watch me.
Watch me breathe it.

(starts good, finishes weak -- rethink this one. it's not so so bad)

lost opus card

damn you,
damn you,
damn you.
Again, I prove again
that I am an incompetent
idiot, incapable of taking
care of myself in any
meaningful way wahtsoever.
I've lost my metro
pass yet again,
or for the first time
really.
But I've lost things more
valuable than this,
and every single time,
I am ashamed.

one day a love poem

one day, shams, I can write a love poem
a happy poem, a poem that i know is
merited by the one it describes
because he loves me so much more
than I love him.
Isn't that the way of things for women?
nothing works until a man is consumed
with desire, consumed with the sickness
that life is meaningless without?
He wakes up and holds me in his mind,
a virus of the blood that has changed
the very plasma of his cells.
There is no day without me.
The other dimensions are so small,
I could hold them in the palm of my hand,
and yet my eyes don't see them in
front of me here, right at the end of
my breath.

love's arrows are such barbs in my hind
and i'm scratching at the welts they give me
tearing at bolts of flesh to get some
poison and i'll suck down on this
raw, red wound gaping and winking at me,
on my arms.
I hate this disaster. I hate it, I hate it.
And the disaster is that you will not go.
You will not.

the degree
of anxiety
is high.

oh so very disappointed

you know how these things go, Shams.
Easy come, easy go.
So it always is for me.
But if the story is over with one,
so it will begin with another.
From where I sit,
it seems so dreadful to have
nothing to sing about.
Though I wonder, Shams, if
I am just lying to myself.

i am watching this paper
on the ground out the window
as it creeps along a crack
in the wind, listening to someone
talk to me and i'm not even here
and he's trying to impress me
or reach me, but i'm in no mood
for this kind of thing anymore
i'm tired today
i'm tired with all you people.
leave me alone already.
i crave the silence of my own
house, and not talking, not
listening.

where are you, Shams?
My head is full of songs.

in my languid moments,
like now,
now that I am tired and
frustrated,
I would like to lay down
my head in your lap
and look into your eyes.
and you could tell me,
don't worry, i'm here.
You can brush my hair back with
your hand and say
don't worry, i'm here.

Menelaos

Agamemnon, full of heart, is always confused by
Menelaos, his sword bearing brother
with full beard and big laugh,
drinking from a horn,
and drinking with the men,
playing cards and telling stories
until all hours of the night.
If Menelaos were not his brother,
he could understand why Helen
left with a younger man,
a knockout like her married to
an uncomplicated man like
Menelaos.
It never could work.
Helen might have liked Menelaos
rugged good looks and his
rustic ease.
He never cheated or lied,
but quite probably never
felt so strongly that he needed to.
Though agamemnon...
Agamemnon had more pain in
his days, and didn't

(this is a good one, again, a start of one. I will work on it)

my hands
are so
cold