"His goal in life was to be an echo . . ."

Whiskey hiding (Or Liquid Fever Dreams)

A fifth of whiskey is hiding where you hid it
on the shelf in the cabinet above my refrigerator.
Only about a fifth of the bottle is full,
"Drink the rest when you need it," you said before you left for the East Coast.
I sometimes unscrew the cap and take a whiff when the mood strikes,
but until tonight could never bring myself to drink it.
A fifth of a fifth that never saw the light of day,
like a bat hanging in the darkness of a cave
or the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ
resting, sacred and silent, in a tabernacle.
I remember the night you came over,
whiskey-stunk, glassy-eyed, and stumbling drunk.
I was already in bed when you knocked,
so we kissed hello and fucked each other to sleep.
I took a shot of that whiskey when I thought of you tonight.
You are hiding just like that bottle in the back of my memory,
your white, broken body holy and still.
Our friend bought me a shot glass from Hawaii,
and it has sat frozen in my freezer, dry and thirsty for months.
A shivering, Hawaiian, virgin shot glass, aching for the dark warmth of your whiskey.
Just like I remember, you burn my throat as you go down.
I even made a toast to you standing there alone in the kitchen,
"Here's to all the good things in life
and to burning bridges before you cross them."

Kate and Edith drinking doubles (Ugly women lookin' better)

Kate and Edith,
ugly women.
Drinkin' doubles.
Lookin' better.

I would never stab you in the guts with a knife I stole.

En route, New Orleans to Paris (Planets Crossing Paths)

My friend Breton left today,
en route, New Orleans to Paris, riding
in the belly of a silver bullfrog hopping across a salty pond
(I prefer delayed destinies and the bellies of fishes).
We have been friends now, what,
going on five years long? Years full
of returned books, emptied bottles, hurried dreams.
Joey just left for Seattle, maybe two or three weeks
before Breton left. We have been friends since we were five.
He left for Seattle, all his things in his truck,
staking a claim (his “Manifest Destiny,” he calls it), to draw homes
for the humans of Washington state.
I am glad that I am happy for both of them.
My friends, we are a solar system of colorful planets,
racing through this blackest of spaces, weaving
in between stars and comets, scattered like marbles.
We are all standing firmly on this planet Earth, breathing
the air that has been breathed by billions and billions of beings
for millions of billions of years. We were all born in a decade
of decadence, disease, and drugs, all driven by Democracy.
Why else on Earth would we roam, straying far from the familiar hum of home?
A couple of years ago, around this time of year, I remember Breton leaving,
en route, New Orleans to Paris, and I was driving
on the interstate feeling like I had been mixed with the concrete
and poured there to dry. Yes, we are planets, coalescing
from the cold dust of space into warm and vibrant worlds.
Some of us take a thousand years to revolve around the Sun,
some of use take only a couple hundred days,
but each can see the twinkle of the other from across the galaxy.
And when our orbits cross paths while sailing through the stars
there is gravity and there is grace.

A Prayer for Sarah

On Sundays, Sarah, you pack up your suitcase
with stacks of thick books. You grasp
the handle, hold it at your side before the mirror,
wearing a bonnet and a tough pair of boots.
You say you love to feel the weight of leaving.
But your books are only bricks, and your feet
are fixed and flattened like floorboard slats.
Sarah, your brass clock rings in the morning,
but you awoke before the golden dawn,
lying tangled in your sheets, staring at the cat in the corner.
Sarah, a world of war is begging outside your skin.
You have a thousand stories stirring inside your bones,
lay them out like fossils to tell your history in silence.
Sarah, you are a candle concealed beneath a bushel, burning.
Ancient infant, milk mother, your eyes are two springs
swelling secretly from the center of the earth, converging in a roaring face.

In the kitchen by the 'fridge, our lips just touched, just brushed, just gently and quickly. You know I kiss you 'cause I can, with my one arm around your wonderful waist. Boy, are you an apple, dangerous red and dangling.
Footsteps on the floorboards, he is coming. I am not scared but you scurry back, we turn our backs to each other. I am pouring a glass of water, you are looking in the 'fridge. But he is no one to me, he is no one to you, and right now, Baby, you're it.

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When a woman wants you to kiss her, you can feel, it is magnetic, it is like your mouths are magnets with opposite polarities, if they pass closely enough they will touch, they quiver and jump if you hold them closely together and then they have to touch.

Trying to love you is like dropping
a candy dish on a hummingbird.

You are floating while I shatter on the ground.