stranger, not stronger

          (or: a screw makes as good a bookmark as any)

  for Anselm, Clara, and Mark

the title is A Poem (that is also

Cool) but my fingers have other ideas

like the tempo and the curve that follows lack of speed

(oh, possibilities, how easy we were)

when we remember what “apostrophe” is

the title is easy (that is also A Poem) but the curve

has other possibilities, other instances

and even deterioration

oh this is as good an excuse as any

(point, deliver) but why are the lights?

I will show you

tenuous

the title is death in [three?] acts

and this is not easy but the curve and the possibilities

oh fuck the possibilities haunt us, other deteriorations

this is not good

but I will show you

(the edges, did I mention the edges?

I can’t point anymore, unbearable, I wasn’t

really there)

the possiblities are the tempo, the apostrophe, the

blue label we cannot find

the diversion we need, we need, we need I can’t point

anymore

the title is not easy, the other possibilities

exhausted

there is no map for what comes next

Some Mistakes Were Meant to Last

                      (a love poem)

I’ve got a case of tug in my heart

right in the corner of my eye

I’ve got a distant obligation and a mouse trap

to empty, a mouse trap to set

I’ve remembered what “I” forgot

always a phantom in the periphery

but tomorrow I will say I was “busy”

(this part of the shadow is already

in the world) this benevolence

I’ve got to fiddle with the pattern—

did you really say?

the silence that must make me complete

reaches

gonna pretend (this poem needs a title)

gonna pretend you’re downstairs humming

the Rite of Spring when I know you’re not

even dancing in your seat

it’s a simple concept and a whole lot of air

the catch: you have to genuinely want

the thing and we will measure this on a scale

of 1 to 10, 1 being the greatest

desire (gotcha) but I don’t warn you

you just appear

humming

and if it’s not the Rite of Spring (which it

is not, I know

you don’t even know it)

I’ll pretend it is something derivative:

(it’s all really I-IV-subject-predicate-V-maybe V⁷-object-verb-I anyhow)

but I know

you wouldn’t mutter like this if it wasn’t real

What— Um?

                           (for Clara and Mark and Nova inserts herself too)

I.

the pause itself is derivative

is so easy to transpose and insert—where were you,

an effortless—so I run away? no, so I

insist on this difference, inference, indolence, eternal

obstinance etcetera

the pause itself is where I would articulate my reluctance

(how language is understood and

processed) where I would insinuate my disbelief

the pause itself (resolution can be difficult)—there are a number

of competing versions—a return to the center that is not

or this is what I remember of that heartache I mean that text

that pause

my reluctance, I’ve been nostalgic for that edge ever since

or still (this asymmetry is unbearable) one can press pause

rewind, go back but you never really return and it never really

the pause itself is still, the pause is reluctant

just like

the center is not the center or this is what I remember

and this is what I forget

II.

, but um, especially in Western ideas this single event creation meant that everything was put on this earth at one time and it could not change afterwards

so we talked about insomnia as if it were our friend because in fact it was, we talked about jet lag as if it were something different because in fact it was not

I miss that edge, that sharpness

um first of all Hutton and Lyell were both geologists, and they came up with not together but sequentially a couple of really important ideas. important eventually to Darwin.

I predicted this

this diminishment

this question— hmmmmm

and several notes, repeated, repeated, several notes several breaths (a single event creation)

he was a troublemaker

but this is just the sign that says “edge” and the real edge

is over there; because oblivion (strike this out?)

how much time has oblivion demanded? how much time there was no room

in Western philosophy for looking for variation and looking for change.

I am left dangling right here so stop fucking dying

stop fucking dying right now

— so long as I don’t finish the wine it counts, OK?

just stop fucking dying

III.

this dystopic dissemblance: what is most like?

what is most unlike? and which button do I press to make my preference

known?

what is most difficult? whom do you pity most? or

whose tragedy could you not bear

(so long as I don’t finish) whose comparisons

are gentlest dear reader, whose

intricacies                       have failed?

pronouns be damned

we were talking about substance

we had misplaced certain articles we were sure to find

later

but there was no later there was only, UM—

there was length, there was inability, there was displacement, there was diversion, there was

hesitance

(there was repetition) there was a story that was lost and then

there was this likeness and all that was left:

a shaft of light and oh, the ringing of the bells