On Paper

But I do not love you…
Unless it is on paper,
Where my pen runs freely
Looser than my lips or actions ever will.
Creating a romance that never was,
that could have been, that never will be.

Still I create poetry that pulls me back to you
And convinces me of hidden meanings
In my thoughtless prose
Which is more about who I am,
Than who you are to me.
But I am a poet; casting mixed signals
Because I’m afraid I will break your heart
If you can’t have me.
But I do not have me, no one has me.
Mine is an intangible love.
It does not exist.
And without capacity to house you.
I cannot be a home &am instead vacant
like the retail space born in this recession.

&so you are injured by me &cannot forgive me
For that which I never offered but that you insisted we should be.
.

The Departed

Nothing but death Shall judge me a failure
And make my wedding dress into winding sheets
As I was created without a meaning
Until I was born& decided what I should mean.
And not until death can I say you were my great love
As great as my grandfather loved my grandmother
Until he met his end & became what he was working toward.
In life we are but actions:
A child sitting, a man working
A novice writing,
A lover happy, a brother so angry...

Until we are all these things;
these separate moments that impress on the memory
Once the final breath billows out of the soul
Like cigarette smoke from fastidious throats.
Nothing but death shall make me beautiful,
Until I have had a lifetime
To know what beauty is
&see in myself those subtle moments
Where the aged are near to death
And their pearlized eyes smiled,
Like sinewy necks cut from ear to ear.
With knowledge that they would soon become…
something that I was born to become.
That I long to become:
The departed.