Pre-approved

Imagination is for things
That are not.
Either just not there
Or had and lost.
So fantasy or pain of loss.
Tolkiens have exclusive rights
To the former
While mine is a larger group
Called the romantics.
Membership demands are
Very democratic.
All you need are problems
Of personality and
Some masochism: no proof
Of identity needed.
All humans qualify.

Work in Progress

You know how we do that?
Conjuring up “friends”
When we feel
What we want to say
Will sound better
From elsewhere:
Oh, I have a friend who used to…

I think I am one of them.
I mean I am one
Of those “friends”
Conjured up
By someone somewhere
Using me as a proxy
Tentative self.

Like a test-drive vehicle.
If it works
They make more;
If not
They improve upon it.
Or simply give up.

No complaints: first drafts
Can never be disowned.
They go
Into air-conditioned
Glass cases in museums
If their author dies
A memorable death.

Or to Sothebys.

No Promises

No stubble-tickle, no back-rub,
Only morning air on my lips,
It hurts just hurts to wake up
To a day that has no you.

To a day that has no promises
of mock-anger and true love.

To one that isn't sweetened
By the sweat on your nape.

It's all effort to get up and get by
On a day that wraps you in a night
Over there out there on the other side.

I am already your tomorrow
So I can tell you how it hurts.

Since you love me oh so much
Be warned about tomorrow,
Be warned about this day
That has no promises.

All the time

And then that had to be.
That's how it always had to be.
There. You had said that.
And that's that.
The end of things.
They can now fester in the silence
that clatters like spoons on china.
They can now grow and cloud my eyes.
They will now hide
in the new space
between you and me
when we hug.
You will not know how I wonder
at how normal you are.
Normal shall not be wondered at.
But we will carry on
Just as we always have.
Until one day I scream,
drowning it in the cry
of the fire engine,
making you more normal than ever,
giving you another chance to say
"See! I told you!"
It will all be like just a screech
of chalk on blackboard.
The lesson's the same.
It happens.
All the time.

Dear One,

This is the round tana
our conversations shape now;
what we go around, not through.
This can now be measured
as that which we do not speak.
This is the sum total
of all that you never ask me.
Plus all that I want to tell you,
that come out in strange tongues.
This is why I travel miles some days
to see you. Who cares about the long-
borrowed book?
This is what could fill
all my silences around you.
This is what we make poignant
by the suffering to tell and ask.
This is what stays back
in the filter.
This is what never disturbs
our tea.
This is what you must hear.
This is what I must speak.
Now.

Untitled

Passing clouds filtered the moonlight
and laid out on the sea
a stage
befitting only something extraordinary.
The friend on the sand did not stop
his out-of-tune singing of a stuck line.
The watery arena glistened
with my anticipation of something.
Something that would complete this day for me.
The friend could still not find the next line
in his jumble of songlines and hmmms
and la la la's.
As tufts of cloudlets drifted away
and the moon peeped out at us all,
the perfect man walked into the light
and let the glistening waters
touch him just eversomuch,
ran his perfect silhouette fingers over
his perfect silhoutte head of hair,
and exited.
Clouds closed in
and the friend on the sand
found just the next line to his song.
And we grinned.

Guilt

The pencil lead broken on the table,
the mild stutters, the slight swoon in the chest,
all this darkness when the phone rings
and throws in little flourescence his name,
with a custom tune set in days of happy togetherness.
Symptoms of guilt.

Of not having loved enough,
but having lived once like you did
and zoning out like a power cut,
Just bang. Gone.
The aftertaste of trying to sing
"I don't know why I didn't come."
It matters not you truly didn't know
why you didn't come.
You didn't come.

You can stand someone up.
You have been stood up.
They refuse to strike each other out
in a game of elementary this for that.
Sweet innocence cannot even be feigned.
This is how love is performed
by some of us who do not know
how it is to be done.