People tell me
a lot
about how I’m
sad & ruining all my moments
here alive with everyone
by being sad & being
somebody who has forgotten how
to live in
our wet-eye skyscape
our futile snow globe
our lost mess
& I know I want to go,
I do,
really—
I know I’m different from
you in
the most unremarkable way: that basic
absence of life—
but I didn’t believe
those girls those voices those
mothers
the milky eyes of bewildered fawns
who sit with bad haircuts & empty heads looking up &
I believed none, all of them, about my
sadness
my “illness”
my what the fuck ever
until it snowed almost two feet
this weekend
& I sat inside the night before
before the glow of my screen god
before the choke of my cocoon
& ate edibles & got ugly melted &
I promised myself I’d take
that morning walk through unbroken
unsullied white powder &
shut off the mind
the Great DumbBoy Sad
& pretend I’m Young Goodman Brown
riding the lightning
untethered
getting all of it
that stupid-thick Puritan rush—
pretend my somewhere & your somewhere could bend
& get rough & clash
& we could stay together all night
& I could do what you want
& untangle you from that familiar priestess
& we could
do what we were to what we’ve become;
take me high outside this trash brain &
show me what you’ve grown inside your
elegant spilling ruin of head—
to traipse about, high & smiling
walking anchor heavy brutal foot
through moon-drenched ice kaleidoscope, sun-drenched ballet,
stargazing in the morning at the reflection that is mine
& no one’s
just mine
while you sleep
somewhere
yellow-haired & porcelain-faced
(yellow I cannot touch, the conjuring of your frost)
undisturbed
miles south &
I did that—
I promised myself something unscathed by my fat-head chaos, that walk.
But then
but then I got real distracted by
the fact that I’m one being:
dwelling alone, outside the realm of your breath,
beyond the evanescent sleep watch of
your eyes like
eyes like
eyes like ash-clouds
a wolf waking up like
the cool spill of silvered lakewater
against flesh like
I can’t leave your grasp when they’re on me like
the noose of that svelte shimmer
that summer I want in you
of that walk before me
that walk behind me
that move you make
that rush of daybreak
& your nonlinear multitudes &
your avalanche of ethos & it is somewhere
with you who is somewhere
& I am not there
& it is suddenly very present—
I remember all of it
& I remember that nobody cares if I wake up
& nobody cares who I love
or what I eat or what I don’t eat while I starve
I say these words
they are just
a promise to myself
to eventually wake up
pull the plug
stop the death-march
breathe.
I remember that my experience
out of heaven is mine
& it is mine to make
& it is mine to smother &
I think of those I lost
& minutes pass
& I think of how moms get old
& how everyone gets old &
how I’m getting old &
I’ve done nothing:
I’m not a rock star
I’m not a fuck-king
& I own nothing &
I’m mostly birthed
halfway gone
& I’m a tourist in everyone else’s home
& I’m a visitor in your life
while you own every breath
in my filthy lungs
whether you want it
or not
you have it
& I’m sorry for the way I am
& I’m sorry you have to know I love you
& I’m jealous that you can walk from me if you choose
while I’m in this motherfucker until cremation.
I’m thinking with the shades down
& smoking stupid & fucking with my pretty chalk-pearl benzo stash &
light dances beyond the shades &
my dream of unsullied snow is somewhere
& I am somewhere else &
when I walk out
to the red-eyed morning
I see
somebody has stepped on my snow
with dirty shoes
& now it’s just ruined & it’s because
I didn’t sleep & dissociated wept drugged instead
& now, like everything else I want to
squeeze to death in this gorgeous
blood-soaked shell of a world,
it is gone from me
that cool untouched breathrest morning white;
someone got there first
& fucked the life out of it
& now I don’t want the
whole thing;
you,
yes, you,
can keep the whole mess
& what I’m saying is that
I get what they say about me &
what I’m saying is that
I know it’s all my fault &
I’m saying that I still love fresh snow
even if I won’t let myself claim it like I did
when I was something before what I am now &
how I really hope that still counts for something
because if not
what am I
& am I anything like
the thing I was before
I met myself?
I’m saying I hate being old even
more than I hated being young &
what I’m saying
is that
I love you
& I’m also saying that I’m glad
you don’t know me
enough to hate me yet &
that I can still pretend
for a while
that you’re the person
who fixes this
who fixes me
when I fade
who wears eyes of pewter & narcolepsy
who feeds me to every new unblemished snow
without a word.