The Other Way

I remember you vaguely,
an early story of those days when
the world was expanding still...

I remember your name before
it shed a few letters, back when
the night was dark and
engulfed us, ignorant,
in its silent siren song.

I remember, vaguely, the way
I must have felt about you when
my body was uncharted yet,
and without a compass,
you somehow found a way.

Your voice, in those days before
it learnt its modulations--
when I prayed for it on the hour
and god was immortal still...
Now reaches me,
lilting and laden,
and I forget
to recognize it.

And in the silence between
when you extract yourself from
the loudness of your days and
the reverberation of my name,
we say all that we will ever say:
the love subtle and passing,
memories all but inconsequential,
and the two of us long estranged.

I still ponder, with fresh amazement,
at how it’s come to this...
At the full circle of anonymity,
and such dates that compel us
to reach across the vast divide
that has grown in between,
leaving us looking, always,
the other way...

(Originally posted on June 3, 2007)

Silent Night

Here, where the silence is delicious,
the end is garbled in fragments of song
—repeated, stale, and resounding—
echoing in corners of rooms dimly lit
with bulbs on a string, stars
—dangling and scratched—
like lives spilled into kitchen sinks.

Here, where the drain chokes with leftovers,
a cat snatching a piece of half-chewed meat,
and a voice telling of what should have been,
I fall through the cracks of the silence,
a promise broken at the end of the night
when acquiescence is no more than lack of resistance,
and nods are all there is.

Here, not because it is,
but because the memory of it resides
nestled underneath my breath,
peering from behind my fevered eyes
at the moment as it lapses.
Here, where we persist,
you and I, stumbling eternally,
aimless drifters in a world half-lit.

(Originally posted on December 26, 2007)

Somewhere

Somewhere there’s a revolution, I hear,

Somewhere I used to know...

And here, in a darkening dusk,

In an expanse of grass

Turned purple by the silence,

I turn away...

This is life stripped of excesses:

No one else for days,

Voices all digitized,

The constant hum of a world

Churning itself.

I laugh just because

I miss the sound.

And they come

Seeking life;

They turn them away

Not knowing

It is life they bring.

Tell no one this,

I say it here in confidence,

Throw it to the dustbin of words.

There used to be someone

Who wanted to be great

But forgot—

Where was I?

Ah, yes…

(Originally posted on Sep. 17, 2015)

Back, with a Limp

It wasn’t for love;
that much I know now.
Looking at your face,
an echo of what I was,
my pretenses falter.
The corners of your smile
still wrinkle with the same abandon;
your eyes, holes in my fabric.
It wasn’t…

It was for my defeat in you that I sang,
falling gloriously all the way
and climbing up again.
You were only an excuse for my loss,
a reason for shattering.
The void in me where you nestled
was older than us.
And for being so blind,
I seek forgiveness.
You did not earn
the wrath I sprung on you;
you were not worthy of the venom.

Glitter on, like I never happened.
Soak the life I dreamed in you,
and bask in my absence.
I continue limping,
lifting the shadow that I cast,
unfurling.
I have yet to fill
what I thought you had left.
And I have yet to name it.

(originally posted on July 26, 2008)