You hadn’t come as far as you have now,
Or seen the many things that you have seen;
You hadn’t found out who you really are,
A thing you found out in the years between
But you might trade all that, and maybe more;
All those amazing places you have been –
For yes, much ignorance has been erased,
But heaven knows it:
You were happy
Then
The years are dust
The light is now
And the room is made of riddles
The questions that get asked
When no one could expect an answer
Of why we did
The things we did
And how we casually dispensed
With friends
With time
With life
I have a secret in this room
It is my burden, alone
For while greed has its economy
And envy has its politics
Regret
Has only an attic
her regrets, like the ocean
in their immensity and constant turmoil
surrounded both of us –
far too real to be ignored
because i loved her,
i left her ocean undisturbed;
because i love her,
i offer only my
acceptance
we who live
live with imperfect knowledge;
we cannot know outcomes
there we sat,
surrounded by the ocean;
here i sit now,
surrounded by my own thoughts
my friend:
i do love you.
and love,
like stars that hover
high above any ocean,
does not change the water,
but give us –
if only for a time –
something else
to look at
The hallowing of hollowing,
A process I know well:
I filled myself with nothingness,
And grew too proud to tell –
I thought my sorrows justified
The moments that I stole;
But then, the truth intruded on
What was left of my soul —
I know the emptiness I’ve lived,
I feel the keening lack –
But now, my eyes have seen the truth:
There is no going
Back
The kind of trouble that she was
I’d never known in all my days;
But found in new and countless ways
That trouble is as trouble does
Entrancing in her loveliness,
And seemingly so soft and sweet:
I found her virtue truly fleet,
For she, at heart, was pitiless
Our troubles take a certain shape.
I sought, from her, a higher ground:
But when I breathed her in, I found
A trouble I could not
Escape
in the seismic registry,
a record exists of an
unusual disturbance —
a tremor made entirely
of partially frayed regrets
rue, tousled by breezy thoughts
Music and words can block out sound
But cannot block out thought;
I drive and drive to clear my mind
But don’t find what I’ve sought
It all surrounds, envelops me,
The rain, the fog, and you;
I cannot see, I cannot hear,
And nothing that I do
Has saved me from the blinding truth
Here in the fog and rain:
That you and I will never,
Ever,
Be the same
Again
The heart that skittered in my chest
betrayed the world before my eyes;
the few who I had loved the best
had spun away to alibis.
I looked and stared, I stared and looked,
but nothing came to focus clear;
the wind still smelled as fate had cooked,
and I was neither there, nor here.
The truth was, I had lost much truth,
but hearts that change look much the same:
as I burned under self-reproof,
consumed to feel I was to blame —
There is a hatred we can’t ‘scape,
for it is everywhere – and whole —
a lurking phantom in our shape:
the forfeiture of joy
and soul
