I STILL MISS MY EX
There are few miracles left.
Portable religions are not enough.
The new gods feast on liver.
The old ones, however, the ones that
break your heart and cause a great deal of suffering,
are as reliable as ever.
So one hungers and angers after something
as one also gets hung up on a sock.
Online, I admire people who present themselves
as happy and desirable like anyone addicted to a lie.
But I admire others more:
the cheated-on and cheating,
whoever’s stuck clinging to false testimony.
One day your destitution comes to you
in the shape of a text message
with the faded glamor of a car ad,
some drug prescription, a podcast
about the joys of staying in bed all day.
Though sun shines as it must.
Imagine a monk leaving his perfect cell
to tread the grounds in fuzzy slippers.
As a child, I found tornados interesting.
I did not care for dragons nor dinosaurs.
Sports were for people who
didn’t have a tiny bruised thumb.
I kept my own counsel, went to school
dressed like Henry Ford, brandishing
a plastic suitcase meant solely for toy food.
This is only one of the many reasons
that I still miss my ex.
The queer keep records of their suffering.
The lavish nod of a stranger can lead to ravishment.
For the world is a closed door.
Around the block, any number of bakeries
are getting ready to dump uneaten goods
into piles of departing trash.
Mentally my ex may reappear as any number of things:
a white barn owl hovering in the rafters,
the soft-armed sticker on a discount book,
the eyeliner of a hostess left at her reception stand.
I’m not someone who remembers their dreams.
Still, I appreciate a good helping hand.
I’m not always set in an anti-social stance.
Sex did not interest him; agony did.
Is it possible to miss someone’s depression?
The paltry world of words is an ashtray.
Elaborate doodles locked in a drawer wither away.
Like any Christian idiot,
I find people’s painful privacy to be riveting.
So he was an island unto himself,
someone who wore wax ears,
was filled with high silly laughter,
completely unfazed by TV or death.
What has become of my melancholy assistant?
Everyone’s stuck on a crystal highway.
We suspect, with good reason,
our way will not turn out well.
Some take to large blankets; some to Nembutal.
Meanwhile I wish I could relieve his wine-soaked migraines.
Or tempt him once more,
to step back into the light.
Hands filled with adhesive mustaches
or a prop cigarette.
In my next life, I will fall in love inside a small medieval theater.
I will stomp through vineyards
and probably fall for a swimming guard.
I don’t mind wearing the emblem of the wrong gender.
I respect people who scoff at troubadours
and the intricate lies of fictional ladies.
My own mind cooks up aqueducts.
I watch people review skincare products in the shower.
I picture hamlets in Utah, LA, San Juan or wherever.
Even so, it’s quite the experience
to affix your hopes on someone who at bottom
basically holds life in general contempt.
More people should refine their sense of apathy.
Wisdom dries; dead fish roll in the ocean;
gills are cut; feminist literature remains in fashion.
I miss bright feathers pinned to walls.
The hand-sewn lining of an executioner’s hood.
Among giants and creeps, pedantic avoidants,
the new circus consists of algorithms,
geese and fake credit lines. Yet consider
the mushroom; the nervous tendrils of soil.
And yet, the gods are never far.
It may be wrong to date a comet.
To actually catch in your lap a falling star.
I scrawl on the back of a napkin not a #
but some hidden password prayer.
In the dressing room mirror, I watch her
adjust cleavage and curse out her ex-husband.
He could whistle through his teeth.
He was a young crane calling in the shade.
Every offering of sorrow he made
(little of which had to do with me)
I could never refuse. Even now he’s probably
near some rec center or exiting a bathtub.
Holding onto his silver trident.
Staring down some healthy bowl of grains.
He cut a lovely figure. He was kind in a broken kind of way.
I’m pretty sure he was sad before the world was born.
