Conceit.
Long glistening towering
Over a past that is now lived,
Understood, disappointed.
The last time we spoke
You told me of the
Only two lessons
Your father ever taught you
“Time destroys everything.”
And
“The postman always rings twice”.
This October,
My thoughts
Are brittle as snow
And not nebulous.
This October,
All I need
Is to not be me.
This October,
I want to be forgotten
Rather than be known
In any way,
I would rather not
Be known.
This October,
I want to pull away.
You are an out-of-season flow
And you keep asking everyone
If they identify with Kierkegaard's
Either//Or.
The times you closed on me
All the times I tried to be your reprieve
And all those texts you sent in the morning
Ersatz emotions
Anything to feel closer to you.
Call me if you are sinking
Mid-sentence,
Mid-death.
or, on a day
You feel like
Will never end.
Snow,
A drive-in,
Soft glowing street lamps,
Softer lips,
Abrasions to the lips and jaw,
Sharing a Mortlach in a freight train yard.
What use will any of my poetry be?
When they further expand the city
Into this freight train yard.
The containers where the
Disconsolate seek love
Will grow into deconstructivist skyscrapers.
And all the love housed in those warehouses
Will get folded, and folded, and folded
And then smeared into the alcoves.
I am no longer screaming
To portend the inevitable anymore.
All the gas station rum
flowing through my blood,
Is twisting my stomach into knots.
​
Misled by the M8,
Taking the wrong turns, and
Into an alcoholic summer.
Synapse to synapse,
The roads ahead thin out.
I am no longer waiting
For God.
Even though God
Has always been here
Everywhere and in every instance
Where I have suffered
God would not be so kind
To intervene in suffering
He had a direct hand in effectuating
I have never concerned myself with divinity.
Lofty concerns, as such,
Stay on the rim of the eyes
of virtuoso and priests.
I have only known this existence,
And have only cared for you.
I have always believed my life to be meaningless
But you paint it in a way that just
Happens to look like a picture
That has meaning.
I do not know how to start this,
All I hope for is
Nobody else relates to these
Words I have written for you
I am told it is easier
To think of you as
An impossible that goes on.​
Last night,
You came in through my window,
And asked me to list all the things
I cannot save you from.
You left without a sound,
And a note that read
“I hope you don’t make a habit out of me”.
I am writing this at six am in the morning
At the back of a nearly expired milk carton.
Of late, it has dawned on me how
I never got to ask you
Why do you hate that patient in ward 5088 so much?
or what the view from your window is
Whether a run-down bridge
or a fluorescent mulberry-lit store th
Only sells maps of Cincinnati
With brown borders
Like the colour of your eyes.
It is 2000 again
It is the dawn of the new millennium
From the dawn of a new world
To the end of one world
And the birth of another.
As I sit in an airport
Watching everyone move in a transitory state,
I am leaving so many things behind,
but I am going someplace new.