38 Loss poems

Too many are leaving usually they greet in sleep before dashing as in today with this gentleman (awkward not to type his name) when yesterday in the shower I remembered his face in Aardvark something about NWA but not about them just a played reference There were newspaper clips all police brutality, all framed with snow & I vaguely recalled something about Uma Thurman & the Menils when the guard ushered me out for touching the African sculptures I waited in the lobby for hours like this morning reading that he overdosed. It was a hotel & I didn’t even know him I don’t even know his work

this morning I felt my life if you were dead the expansiveness of the bed the birds still singing the remnants of the smell of coffee in the morning the emptiness of thought the deafening silence of my heart

There were two kingdoms only: the first of them threw out both him and me. The second we abandoned. Under a bare sky I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body, he for a long time rotted in the rain of his. Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years. He held my hand with a trembling hand. “Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile. Look, further on ahead, there between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”

We had a city also. Hand in hand Wandered happy as travellers our own land. Murmured in turn the hearsay of each stone Or, where a legend faltered, lived our own. The far-seen obelisk my father set (Pinning two roads forever where they met) Waved us in wandering circles, turned our tread Where once morass engulfed that passionate head. Cornice rose in ranges, rose so high It saw no sky, that forum, but noon sky. Marble shone like shallows; columns too Streamed with cool light as rocks in breakers do. O marble many-colored as reach of thought, Tones so recollected and so distraught. Golden: like swimmers when the August shore Brightens their folklore poses more and more. Or grey with silver: moon’s whirling spell Over the breathless olives we knew well; Ivory as shoulders there that summer-dressed Curve to come shyly naked, then find rest (The tresses love dishevelled leaning dazed And grateful). Or the wayward stone that blazed As cheeks do. Or as eyes half-lowered flare. Violet as veins are, love knows where. Fine coral as the shy and wild tonguetip, Undersea coral, rich as inner lip. There was a stone to build on! Friezes ran In strong chorales that where they closed began; And statues: each a wrung or ringing phrase In the soul’s passionate cadence of her days. O stone so matched and massive, worked so well, Who could believe it when the first brick fell? Who could imagine the unlucky word Would darken to the worldwide sigh we heard? How our eyes wrenched together and held fast Each face tightening to a chalky cast (So poor a copy of one hour before). Who could believe the gloom, the funnelled roar Of cornice falling, forum falling, all Falling? Or dream it fallen? Not a wall With eaves to route the rain. The rivers swelled Till roads groped in lakebottom. Nothing held Clean edge or corner. Caking, the black flood Left every luminous room tunnels of mud. Earth shook: the columns walked, in midair clashed, And the steep stone exploded as it crashed. Soon the barbarian swarmed like locusts blown Between the flood and spasm of our stone. Grunted to tug their huts and marble sties Where friezes broke like foam in the blue skies. Blue noses poked, recoiling as they found Our young and glad-eyed statues underground; Singing salvation, the lewd chisel pecks At boy and girl: one mutilated sex. All our high moments cheapened—greed and grime Charred them in rickety stithies to quicklime. Murderous world. That town that seemed a star Rose in our soul. And there the ruins are. We’ll not walk there again. Who’d wish to walk Where the rats gather and grey tourists talk? Who’d walk there even alive? Or bid his ghost Trail phosphor on the melancholy coast?

Do you know where our child has gone? I’m sorry. Do you know what has become of him?I’m sorry.[        .] Is he hiding in a closet?No. Is he crouched among the shoes?No.[        .] Should we look in the closets?He’s not in the closets.[        .] Should we check the empty boxes?He’s not in the empty boxes.

I wake to leafless vines and muddy fields, patches of standing water. His pocketknife waits in my dresser drawer, still able to gut fish. I pick up his green shirt, put it on for the fourth day in a row. Outside, the rusty nail he hammered catches me, leaves its stain on everything. The temperature drops, the whole shore filling with him: his dented chew can, waders, the cattails kinked, bowing their distress. At the pier, I use his old pliers to ready the line: fatheads, darters, a blood worm jig. Today, the lake’s one truth is hardness. When the trout bite, I pull the serviceable things glistening into air.

everything i do now has a for you at the end of it i woke up: for you i ate something: for you i called a friend: for you you're still the reason

grief math: subtract one person and suddenly nothing adds up the equation was built around them you have to rebuild it without them in it