Congratulations

Some old monk,
dead now a long time
but immortal in prose
caused me to pause

”
憂しと見し世ぞ
今は恋しき
”

You look the same.
The same, perhaps, as I had imagined
now that the sand on the beach has washed away
and been replaced by vaulted roofs, allergies, plum wine,
futons, a girl stifling the urge to skip, a carrot cake muffin.

You look the same in your wedding dress,
nonplussed or unsure how to smile-
fallen into an expression I don’t remember-
but which was probably there the whole time.

And as I sat
surrounded by warmth,
cats,
hope,
insomnia,
allegories in children’s language,
the inevitable decline of each individual,
the listless desire to feel needed,
Required even-

I was happy for our death
and for our birth
and for the truth that lives now
and which scoffs at myopy-
a truth living in a silent, warm memory,
draped in the blowing wind on the pier
where my first regret was timidity.

Congratulations. I hope you are well.

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Realizing loss

As I build my golem,
its ambling praxis divided
like the cracked face
in an old painting
of a woman
too weary for the aching flush of love-

The fear of it never being useful,
never knowing purpose-
does not strike me so keenly
as your eyes set askance as I build.

 

 

Barren

A ghost lies still spilled on the floor
shining like I had imagined soft breathing-
a light enshrouded by my trembling regret,
pulling my chest to the floor.

Its smile is the imagined warmth
made heavier by truth,
made into purposelessness,
into awkward levity.

There is no promise,
as perhaps a promise requires some merciless constraint-
and things are just what they are,
and surely the nature of man is further want-

but man admonishes a night’s rain,
and flees from it.
and the solemnity I feel in a midnight downpour
doesn’t bring the light
of that poor ghost, spilled on the floor.