I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

love.

another night, stumbling from image to image. white buttocks and shadowed hallways and two puppies in a basket floating down a river. the distinct sense of reaching out, like walking through a foreign house at night, arms in front of you, hoping to reach fingertips or lightswitches (either will do) ... the distinct sense of wanting to cough, but not ... can't ...
____and i don't know how to say this, but, after having sat at the bustop we agreed on all night, i stand in the morning, and realize you changed your mind. i walk out onto my patio where the 6am air stares at me but doesn't ask for an explanation. i kick at a patch of overgrown grass.

it's probably best you didn't come by this time.


time.

the steam and smoke of our tea & cigarette conversations has by now reached Horologium Oscillitorium, where it is too quiet to tell our stories, and all the rocks we kicked burn standing upright of their own accord,

white jasmine petals that fall unexpectedly out of small books, and all white dust reminds me of white mountains that are impossible to look at at zenith, and birds of prey and giant spiders and my own body's scars tell

there is no getting around this hillock that grows a foot for every step you take, the seconds that

splintered images of death's twilight kingdom, of snow, and trains cutting across white fields (your skin grown so vast; all the ocean's just your whispers, and the clouds cover the whole sky so there's not a sun or a moon, but a glow of light that slowly creeps down from the sky like haloed bird-kisses or frozen fireflies or secrets swollen into muted-words (if you breathe them in you'll hear truths and all the things i don't know to say can be said


fear.

how?. how will i?. i can't imagine it. i don't know what i'd do. i really don't. i don't know what to do with it now. and now is not then. and when then happens...


god.

dear alleverything. dear giant-creation-machine. dear c# minor. dear circumstance. dear the-time-i-got-drunk-and-ended-up-in-my-underwear-running-around-the-boat-that-was-anchored-just-offshore-wet-and-chuckling-moremoremoremore. dear love-letters. dear star constellations. dear flight-from-Prague-to-Chicago-i-cried-through-mumbling-prayers-to-myself-the-whole-time-so-that-the-lady-besides-me-thought-she-was-sitting-next-to-a-madman. dear forgiver. dear departed grandfather. dear cement walls. dear miscarried fetus. dear forgotten childhood promises. dear Haifa. dear distant silence. dear ecofriendly automobiles. dear slowly-dying-cells-of-my-body. dear inescapable existence (once started, impossible to abandon). dear mistrust. dear piano-wood. dear fatigued eyelids. dear 3am paranoia. dear self-loathing. dear honesty-month. dear mistaken identities. dear person-i-will-one-day-be. dear misunderstood happiness.

how __can __i

(say the rest?)


loneliness.

stumbling out. it was 3am. you've been abandoned, left alone to face the taste in your mouth. why aren't my footsteps lining up?, what have you done - you moron, you don't even know the way back. follow that light, there, that one. it was that way. right foot. left. right foot. yes. yes. who are you? you are not this man. not this. god, someone speak to me, distract me. this is not a thing that happens in my

and we drove in my blue car. he looked out his window, i looked out the front windscreen. the hours passed and we had on loud music no one listened to. finally he looked at me and said: this is bullsh&^ you know that? and i nod. yeah, it is. it really is.

and after i awoke, realized that you probably sensed me on the other side of your eyelid, knocking, but didn't hold out your hand i thought

at 4am, finally, i clumsily walk to the kitchen and pour out some cereal. the milk spills half on the table but i don't bother cleaning it. i stare at the refrigerator that's stained like yellowed-teeth. the refrigerator hums a midnight lullaby made up only of curse words. for a minute i consider standing up and slamming my stool into it 14 times. i crunch the first spoonfull, i misjudge a little and some milk dribbles down my chin; my right hand tightens around the spoon so it hurts. a moment later i exhale. sigh. rub my index finger into the spilt milk. it's cold. you're right. it is. it really is.

no. i'm fine.