MY CRASH OUT PRINCESS HAS GONE MAD AGAIN
My crash out princess has gone mad again.
He dunks his feet in a basin of pure doubt.
His drunk arms knock about the stars.
The elements are rubbing off on him.
Soon the smells of tall city nights lick
And paw his open clothes and rest
Their ache in his wiry eyes before he
Collapses like a fine French wine in a stale
Bed where he has always slept alone
Though he prefers not sleep nor wake
Or anything behind the thumbs of suns.
Ginger fires curdle the corners of his scalp.
Soft gray camera powders blot his ears
And wet glass jaw. I hear cold laughters
Dot the memory of his great depressions.
Some smoke is fit for the disgraced.
The internet is like the idea of opera or a prism.
It takes a simple image that wants for nothing
And soon breeds itself on screens in tens of
Millions of rooms where some of us touch.
THE METEOR
When the small meteor came down
and destroyed my house
and killed my wife
I didn’t know what to do.
That’s how the poem should’ve begun.
But of course
I had no wife
and I own no home.
I was in love
with a boy
who was absent
both when he was in
and out of my life
and he would’ve hated
the word wife
even more than boy.
I will never be married
to anything
but my grief
and fond disasters. Still,
when I tried to tell people
about my apartment being flooded,
my books being lost,
spending six months
moving from void to void
that was never my own
I had no idea
how I could tell them
what happened each night.
I would imagine
a small meteor,
no bigger than a hook,
crashing down
and changing my life.
When does the mystery
of sacrifice
become interesting again?
I spent most days
taking photographs
sometimes of beautiful people.
Sometimes,
at early evening,
I’d be lost in conversation
with questions
that are always too deep
yet never enough.
It’s very possible
the soul
is like a crystal cabinet
with little pieces
coming and going.
I am terrible
at losing things,
but I guess
I’m still a sucker
for loss.
Some grow pregnant
with absence.
Some work on
their mind-lives
filled with the lush foliage
of lust
and grief though
my good friend says
they’re basically
the same.
I have never asked
for much.
I’ve always felt entitled
to keep
what I had.
We stare at our eyes
over a cup of coffee.
You ask me
what I’m thinking about
and know
I can’t be honest.
I keep thinking
about the meteor.
Its perfect little
foamy tail,
its flame
and flint
like an eyelash
of dust.
Of course
I miss my wife,
whom I think of
every day.
I know
it’s not so likely
we will speak again.
I even miss
our tiny little
imaginary house.