The way I wait for you

I wait for you the way
a nonbeliever awaits God and judgment
That is, hunched over pretentious books
forehead warmed by a furious lamp
The words I scribble intermittently on scraps
in the dead of these fierce fall nights
stutter your name incessantly, incredulously
The questions strike me dumb time and again
If you ever come again, will I recognize your face?
Will it be the countenance I almost worshiped
stole glances at avariciously at the table?
The very cheeks I kissed, guilty and trembling
in the treacherous gardens of the imagination?
Will you say, at last, "Come to me. I am. Yours"?
Yet at this moment where I am
Absence has become a Cartesian certainty
There's nothing else but forty nights in the desert
perhaps years of wandering in the wilderness
howls of foreign streets, cars, and criminal desires
weeping for home and the love that never was
an apostate's heart that can only take so much
So now: I wait for you the way
A nonbeliever awaits judgment and God

Fiction

I want to be a character in fiction,
So that while I might doubt, hesitate, and commit mistakes,
It'd be assured that I've a place in a world:
My life and acts and words would have a point.
I'd be connected to other figures in the plot;
My presence and disappearances could be traced.

I want to be a character in fiction,
So I can be sure even of the error of my deeds and convictions:
I'd be a useful spec in a world beyond me
--No need to be the protagonist or the formidable villain,
I'd be my own person, quite apart from the lot of them
--And it'd be possible to pop in and out of a life, mysteriously.

Impressions of a summer long gone

You are one with the grass

It teases, tickles, and pricks 

It bears the scent of the sun

Little people are giggling in delight

Forgetful of being--seriously at play

Reaching for bars and balls and bottles and bare arms

The taller ones slink off together, whispering their truths

Couples amble past in no apparent hurry

Confident as the day: gay, bright, faithful

Girls in Grecian dresses float by on bikes

Elusive oracles: they’re here, then they’re gone

Some lie in the shadow of Cedar-like trees

Keeping warmth alongside their lovers

Why are they so hopelessly far away?

You are there lying on your bulging belly

Deciphering your notes, scribbling on the margins

Squinting at the sun, feeling the ache in your bones

Distracted by every gesture, every laugh

Loving and envying them all--making this

For you are one, intimate, with the grass

A confession

Know—that my love’s

Like poetry

It scarcely cares

For those fixed truths

Or existence

It is nothing

But this—this—this

A troubled force

Useless passion

That wants what's not
Wants you alone

Impossible

Beauty—madness

In your rare look

A touch, a smile

Even a scowl

Dark knit eyebrows

All of it—yes!

Even your no—no?

When you touched my arm

With your unconscious cottony palm

My skin—and more—was alerted to an old gentleness

It was electricity calling to an ironically sleepy youth

It was the rousing murmur of an inchoate promise

Suggesting irrationally and insistently:

There might be a song that can be owned by two

There might be slantly truthful words about us

There might be days of calm in bed with you

There might be a perfect smile for the past

There might be—must be—a meaning to moments like this

Shortcomings

However neurotic you might be about the earthly things you hold dear

Remember that they’re all like skin: they grow, age, limit you, and take damage

The pages of your beloved books will yellow, crease, and crack

Your precious china cups will chip and will always be the resting place of dust

Gadgets get scratched and begin to age long before they’re bought and loved

Crumbs will fall from bread, wine sours, and coffee stains not just your mornings

Dirt and dust are ever present—they’re always taunting and personal

They’re the only constant, more transient and reliable than rivers

More certain than death and taxes, stronger than the illusions of love

Than all the exhausted words that fail to fill the gap between fancy and life

Human hubris, gravity-like, ensures that all things will fall

For hearts and hands will never quit coveting and grasping

As gods, lovers of supplication, will always provide daily occasions for damnation

Non-fiction

What thoughts I have of you as I walk down autumnal streets
Or stroll along narrow supermarket aisles, lugging Henry James around
I imagine running into you in my self-absorbed solitariness
Managing to master my face, speaking coolly like it's no big thing
That it was a matter of course, bound to happen like an oracle, fate.
We'd smile as though we've remained fast friends all this time
And there's nothing to be forgiven, no deprecations to be taken back
You'd be pleasantly surprised and glad like a spontaneous fictional heroine
Perhaps you'd plant a kiss on my warm cheek or envelope me in a hug
I'd tell you I've had a good life--after all--as content as poets could be
And I'd give you a compliment, some literary cliche, and ask you about you,
Hardly listening to your enumerations I'd focus on the lines on your face
We'd say goodbye on the friendliest terms, satisfied with how all of that went,
Happily convinced that it was random and doesn't need to bear deep meaning
And as though already standing on the banks of Lethe, we'd barely wonder
About the what ifs and what should have beens--that wide lost world of love

days like this III

I dream of fleeing this land of rain
And leaving it to its sullen incredulous sky
Say farewell to the pale tangerine walls
The drab fall scarves, the winter that hides pain
The faithfully tardy trains, the grimy metros
The high gothic towers pointing elsewhere
All the paintings of delirious adoration and agony
Of lost myths of heroes and petty gods

I dreamt of flying to that land sparkling in the sea
And seeing it peopled by small bright faces
Gasped at the old Spanish walls, the makeshift roofs
The designer sneakers and jeans, the dusty well-worn shirts
The sleek foreign cars, the decaying buses
The high-rise condos all living elsewhere
All the images of daily agony and adoration
Of lost promises, heroes, and petty gods

my post-exam reactions

Modernism: What the? That was unfair!

Romanticism: Okay, at least promises were kept. . . No surprises there.

English as a Germanic Language: Wait, I need a minute to pray.

Postmodernism: Of course I get a question about the book I know and like least! Lucky I heard my classmate’s (who was already in front of the prof responding to his questions about the same book) answers while preparing my oral presentation.

Realism: Ooh ooh lucky easy question! 

Culture and History of the UK&US: And I memorized all the dates! (It wasn't necessary.)

Advanced English Practice: That was it??? At least now I know stuff about pandas.

English Grammar 2: Aaargh! I thought it was all about modality and making tree structures?!

Development of English: I hate everyone.

Introduction to the Study of Literature in English: Now, that wasn’t so bad!

days like this II

There are days when it seems nothing comes to pass
But the cool wind descended from the North, seeming kind
And the buzzing of immortal flies charting window panes
Competing with the faint chirp and whistle of invisible birds
No omens are to be read in the cloud-covered sky
As even Apollo's fiery chariot has opted to hide
A kind of calm embraces the human all too human heart
The boom of bombs and shrapnel shrieks don't reach it here
Even the summer sports craze takes a welcome break
Past tragedies seem small, negligible like an indistinct stain
What grants this pseudo peace, this retractable respite?
Is it a godly gift to those who stubbornly cleave to belief?
An awareness and acceptance of the irreducible absurd?
The antidote to the affections induced by Love's fateful arrows?
Or is it just a triumphal moment of inherent inhuman immortality?

about a girl

The poems I write are nearly always about a girl:
That one you mistook for a flower and tried to pluck
Another who shone like a summer day
and blinded you with hate or love
The one possessed by her demon lover
inviting you to the ecstasies of anguish
A friend you liked sitting in class with
and laughing time away with in the pub
The mother you can never never love
And who you sometimes like more as a warm voice
Or a handwriting reaching you from a distance
The gone grandmother whose sagging arms
Brought comfort and calm like a Dutch painting
The sister you never had or inevitably lost to time
and the ordinary tragedies of adulthood
The lover who leaves you in the very coming
Or has love enough left to leave you
This one girl who touches you with godlike madness
Life with whom never really began
But is so real in your heart it throbs and hurts
You'd have to write more to exorcise her away

when the light is failing

and the sun is shrinking to shine elsewhere,
the clamor of the streets retreating,
when the breeze rises and comes to caress,
can you see the comfort it brings?
do you smell the explosion of silence?
do you look out the window
to touch my face
kiss my forehead, pat my shoulder?
can you taste the vibrations of my voice
when I whispered I do, I do, I do?
this is how I spend the end of days
speaking to you when the light is failing
hoping you'd stop, breathe in and listen
and see me conjuring you

Remember the moment

Breathe in slowly, take your time, then sigh
All the heavy murmurs of your heart
Let the tears slide down and warm your cheeks
Taste the dissolving saltiness of your hurt and loss
Allow your body to tremble and shudder away
The encrustations of confusion and despair on your soul
Then close your eyes, gather together all your selves
Muster and hold the splinters of your shattered will
Go on, bleed--but remember the moment:
A hand, a pair of lips touched and marked you
And you knew, wordlessly, the lightness of love
You saw your beloved's face and promised yourself
This is where desire takes root and rests ad infinitum
You felt the eager and growing power in your hands
To always do good, to always do better than the past
You began to understand Nietzsche's yes to this world
You grew sure of goodness and almost swooned
Before a vision of possibilities, possibilities, possibilities

Why you'll never hear me say the words

Because your beauty can only be described with all the literary cliches

Because I like it--I want it too much, I despair before the possibility

Because I know myself only too well: holding you means sullying you

Because caressing turns into clutching; because delight dulls desire

Because no heart has never been hurt, no mind is ever free enough

Because you don't know me at all--and if you did you'd say Why?

Because of the Groucho Marx joke about refusing to join a club 

Because saying the words is giving up one of the last secrets of the self

Because once uttered they can never be taken back, only proven false or futile

Because saying isn't hearing, hearing isn't grasping, grasping isn't reciprocating

Because saying is trying, trying is risking, risking is possibly failing

Because there is no way to measure up to the incontestable logic of "because"
Because if you don't compete in the rigged game of love, you can never ever lose.

never again

These days I cram my head with digital trash
When there's time left over I read Faulkner and some Hemingway stories
Those about men and women
They're all about women and men
They all give me well-deserved headaches
So I sleepwalk in town, greedily window shopping
Sometimes buying spicy olives and fancy pastries
(Eating them fast and absentmindedly while I avoid bumping into people)
Then I deliberately forget time in secondhand bookshops (where else?)
Get high on the perfume of autumn hued paper
And pity the dog-eared pages and silently mouth
The names of their old abandoned owners
Scrawled neatly and uselessly above the titles
Wine is good company too for levity
For long dinners, for failed attempts at night reading
When the truth that things are always slipping away
Becomes permanent, a bulky presence in the room
A stranger you sleep with restlessly
Upon waking up I drag my body to the desk
Take up the pen, feel its lightness, envy it
Get drunk on large convincing cups of coffee
I imagine people who work in the dark
Early at dawn, with somnolent and regretful faces,
Moving slow and resigned, steady like time
The street sweeper dragging an awkward machine
Men with helmets on and thick heavy boots
The bus driver, the baker, and women with mops and buckets
Sullen commuters, suicidal bikers, and severely punctual mothers
The pen loves them all and creates them all
Prodding memory and caressing paper with ink
(Oh to write like Blake or Twain! I say to myself!)
It's at times like this that a thought of you slips in (typical!)
I curse my brain of course for being too powerfully greedy
Saying yes to everything as though it were a matter of olives or pastries
Wanting even the doggoned, the properly abandoned, the shed leaves of a life
I muster will to command hand and pen, subdue them to obedience
Reminding them that they're mine, they're me, and there's still me
They should know by now to never ever write of you again

Addict

I confess I was an addict:

There was this drink I couldn't get enough of.

It's as darkly potent as coffee,

Smooth and calming like Irish whiskey.

I had it before, long ago.

Just plain, I thought then,

Not my cup of tea, I judged then,

Not suspecting that a second encounter

Would leave me utterly besotted.

Is it its color? Golden brown

Like a pair of wild romantic eyes.

Perhaps the distinct stubborn flavor 

That seduces, lingers on the lips

And makes the mouth glow with desire.

The stirring warmth it sends to the chest?

Or the levity it carelessly exchanges

For the burdens of consciousness?

I don't know--I don't believe in mysteries,

I'm sure I'm too level-headed for that.

But I enjoyed every gentle sip,

Each caress of the tongue and throat,

Every greedy French kiss with the bottle.

In our trysts, there was nothing else, 

But, er, this drink and euphoric me:

There was security in temporary pleasure.

My so-called friends insisted that I quit,

Resist in cold-blood lest I completely lose it

And I know, I know they might have been right

And it's not like I never tried to stay away.

But they know nothing of the small doses

Of unearthly happiness she granted me

Each time I crawled my way back to her

Eager like a dog, panting for a touch, a treat.

--But that was some time ago now,

When longing was pure and absolute.

Now I stand here dry, sober, and clean

--I confess I was an addict. 

Oh yes I was. I was.

19 March 2014

Ode to resignation

What happened? Oh nothing spectacular really--
Do you think I sound exceptionally happy today?
Well, I have to admit I'm feeling specially chatty--
But I wouldn't go so far as to say really happy
--More okay--and okay is okay--and okay is underrated.
Yes, I'm a little upbeat, as though a pulse is rising in me
Or a quiet secret electricity is coursing through my nerves.
--Yet nothing has radically changed really--believe me.
Work is still that black hole of hope,
Making rent remains a desperate monthly marathon,
Family's good I suppose: I don't hear from them often,
And our lives are still becoming heavier, more sedentary
--We haven't quit losing hair, color, imagination, memories.
It's just that I've come upon something vital--
Call it a profound insight or a flash of wisdom if you will.
But it's really more like I've finally been told the gossip about myself.
It's like being let into the secret of the naturally poor,
Of all the happy enlightened slaves to constructs and creeds,
Of the faceless, the freaks, and the fast and forever forgotten.
It's the simple feeling and flair for life of ordinary people:
The believer, the crazed, the besotted, the genius, the great.
Anyone who's relinquished true desire and brazen dreaming--
Sorry, I think I got a little bit carried away there--
What I'm getting at boils down to something simple really:
It's appropriated despair, better known as resignation,
The most effective cure-all placebo,
The magic pill and silver bullet,
The alcohol-free liquor for life,
Pure protection from pain,
Forgetfulness and forgiveness prior to experience,
The ultimate insurance against the surety of failure,
The ancient Stoic secret: victory without participation
The sorry and surrender that never ever have to be said.

This is what I want

You might think me utterly selfish
But let me spell out what I want
When you come up to me, lean in
Draw your body into mine, into my space
Be close to me, closer than anyone else
Surrender yourself each time to be mine
Touch me like you're conveying a secret
Let your hand rest on my arm or my chest
Gently and complacently like it's sure
It's home and it's where it should be
Whenever we part and I let go of your hand
Clutch it for a second, so tight it hurts
As though protesting and saying you can't live
Won't survive my absence but you'll try
Whisper in my ear in all of your tongues
I want your warm hissing breath there
Feel my skin tingle as your voice spreads
Spreads and vibrates through my entire frame

Develop a profound weakness for me

Make it your greatest fault, make me your folly
Covet me humanly, like you just cannot help it
Like it's a base urge, madness, fate, or disease
When you're mad I want you to glare at me
Like you can instantly end me right there
Scream your lungs out if you feel you have to
That means whatever I did or said pierced you
That means I got close enough to cut so deep

Look at me when a crowd of strangers

Guards the distance that separates us
Make me the awkward object of your gaze
Make me unable to utter a single word
Seeing only that you are there, there you are
The one thing necessary, the one thing I want
Now it's all there silent, it's all there implied

You, whoever you are

Come to me
You don't know it yet but I'm yours
All that I am: All of this:
This cumbersome collection
Of a past that's never past
Of a future that's no future
Yours and yours alone

I'm not talking about destiny
I don't imagine us to have been matched in heavenly time
Or conjoined like pure souls before birth
Not of love at first sight either
All that purported magic
The conjured fireworks of provoked passion
They are more what we desperately desire

I have not seen you nor have you me
I imagine there's a tenderness in the lines of your face
A light in the wild darkness of your eyes
A quietness in the fierceness of your down-turned lips
Fire at the edges of your sandy hands

Come to me
Find me--I'm tired of waiting
And looking for you in the passing blur of faces
In glances that last a couple of seconds longer
In smiles, naturally naive, generously given, or unsure
Find me in some forgettable everyday moment
On the busy bus or in the lonely library
That fruit stand on the corner I frequent
The streets that know the weight and levity of my steps
In the solitude of reading and keeping silent

Come to me
Find me--and in the beginning it will all be precarious
You'll only recognize me in knowing me
Staying close enough to feel the prick
Of the spikes I've grown all around me
I'm sure too that I won't be sure if it's really you
A slowly broadening smile might be a clue
The lingering scent of your hair
The quick shy and daring looks
The small insignificant speech of skin upon skin

Come to me
Find me--I'll be nowhere but here
Eager to promise you world enough and time
To try and fail and be forgiven
And transgress again, again, and again with you
You, whoever you are