why do you mean what you do to me?
because i say you do.

but i couldn’t tell you the content of that meaning.
different things fill it in and nothing is so space-
inefficient as a word or idea
the thin line of a ballpoint demands
fat invisible surrounding moats of margin
i choose to worship consequence of combination.
the reason you mean to me is grout between tiles
its adhesive depends on the specific set of distinct,
discrete things involved. or alternatively,
you could look at it as whatever just happens to be there.

you somehow became a shape that brought it together.
cast it into one united object i could hold
a fish’s skeletal mold
instead of indiscernible piles of skinny, sharp bones.
and somehow now untied
all those place-s where, you know, love, ought to be found
and what it’s thought to naturally wind around

toxic day felt like a thick cumulate cloud
flooding up from my gut and released
as pretty sick green mist into my thoughts.
i could hardly walk across the room the day after
my new friend and i traversed the borough and
dragged our shoes across some graves.

i thought the poison gas was stuck in me and my imagination
but at the waterfront, just knowing you
got me thinking about my capacity for fantasy before
it all got so weird and illicit in this adult way
and i could appreciate the raw force within me
the god of romantic energy.

it’s more important to believe in what i say.
maybe it’s not so trivial,
laughable to
need something indefinable,
maybe it’s not so small
in fact maybe it’s huge -
the space between things
that we don’t name and differentiate.
finally i forgave myself for needing you
i was needling you and
slowly i turned the sharp on myself
this time consciously, pictorially
and to friendly ears in healing hearing warmth

what is that missing flavor that i need?
else. possibility. an answer other than
a yes or a no. where is my libido
moving. acting. rolling, hugging its knees
as it fully embodies and enjoys its own feelings
in all their immediacy
where’s that drive in my newfound state of health?
modulating my mood boosting background experience?

when it runs wild and has nothing to tether
it’s all strung out energy
rising in my chest, spurts of electric joy
and the instability of current. and so i could
recycle or send it deep into the ground
or tie it up with whatever work there is
but anything besides plain release takes
some kind of zen mastery, still a mystery
or is it the same as meditating,
that you just
do it

so i’m glad i haven’t heard from you.
horizontal screen lights up the corner of my eye
like lightning exhumes a black sky
how come today i suddenly think i’m
a figment of your imagination?
better drink cold water again.
i don’t know you and there’s a stack
of paper on my desk and things to sing
and platonic intimacy is a good glass pane
to melt onto instead.
oh, whatever, it all equals out-
silver and gold and will i ever give up the oracle?

i was thinking about what it is - if it works -
and a moth landed on my window screen.
on the other side of the foggy gray day.