It turns out that the place you did not believe in
was the chilly place
where winter could no longer be held back
was the quiet place
where you can wait and wait and wait
and realize that whatever it is
you have to get it yourself
was the place where you begin to become the same color as the
background
and people forget your name
except on holidays when remembrance is mandated and paid for
in phrases used again and again
the beginning with your name written in
and the ending with a hasty scrawl
that needs the return address to be deciphered
when there is not enough time
and you suspect there never will be
when you find out that the incline is downwards
and it's only grace it its angle

It is the inevitability of  unasked for
reevaluation

The re-remembering of moments and events
The snapshots that stand out
Even thought the album was not requested
or assembled.

I am past the point
of being able to fix
anything.

No need to put the lean-to back up
if I have no intention of inhabiting it,

It is just that I remembered, vaguely, being unkind
and I am tired of unkindness
real or imagined
current or historical.

Perhaps I am just putting
the top of the bureau in order.
I remember some things.
Who knows?

There are no dead 

who did not die

too soon

The aspen

The fir

Memories

like shadowed ferns

Suddenly facing the unexpected sunlight

from the tree's

absence

Grow brown spots

Grow dry and die

too quickly.

More quickly than you would have thought

The light of our life keeps our shadows alive.

Get up and read the unfinished poem

to people who don't really care.

Stand with sloppy sheets of paper

held

in an unwashed

hand

with imperfect fingernails

and read.

Forget to run spell check

Make an error or two

Let your rough and unsanded emotion result in splinters

in the fingernails

of all who touch the poem.

Don't even try to imply

pain

Don't let lust arrive incognito

Don't offer polite moisture as

tears.

Get some spittle in your

manicured mouth.

Get up.

Get up.

Sing a song and hit the wrong notes.

We are all listening for your beautiful mistakes

I have plagiarized me. I have decided that legal action is unwarranted but delightfully bizarre. I will write the music tonight...or not. I am sure there will be changes dictated by the music but this stuff is sure fun.

Longing is the memory
we do not have
but search for.

Somewhere you pass the place
where the memory was
supposed to be

As if caught in a current
you pass your landing

On the river

Like a movement

Behind you in the forest
leaving only rustling leaves.

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

Longing is the coldest night

In the middle of

Summer

No matter what you do

There’s no way

To get warm

Memories like viruses

Eat away at your

Self completion

You’ve lost the talent

To protect yourself

From harm

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

I’ve got a poem and some stories

I’ve got way

too many pictures

I’ve got some stubborn suspicions

About a past that might be real

Or not

If I could go back

Well I swear I wouldn’t

I wouldn't even try

I’ve got some stubborn suspicions

About a past that might be real

Or not

Longing is the memory

We can’t quite remember

Like the heat of August

In the middle of December

Like the first rush of love

The very first taste of sex

You can’t quite remember

What the funhouse mirror reflects

No you can’t quite remember

What your mirror reflects

Fall 1994

Longing is the memory
we
do
not have
but search for.

Somewhere
you pass the place
where the memory
was
supposed
to be
as if
caught in a current
you pass your landing on the river
or
on the wrong train
you see your station rush past you.

And
what was expected
receded
into the distance
so quickly
you only saw it with
your
peripheral vision.

Like a movement behind you in the forest
leaving only rustling leave.
You can't remember its
color
or its
texture
or its smell.

Longing is the memory
we
do
not have
but search for.

The past you
never had
kept in a locket
with
no picture.

Your future gone off to war
like a chaste lover
who
did not
return.

 March 14, 2007

Let us put our graves
in the
middle
of things.

Our people interred in surprising
and
inappropriately appropriate places.

At the core of a
carousel
at the corner of
Main and broad

Beneath a bench on a
subway platform.

In your
bathroom
At the table near the
window
At the ice cream stand that opens
each summer
at the beach

Around the Christmas Table
Around the Seder Table

In a
book
In a
song.

Perhaps powdered and co-joined with
a cloud.

In the
ocean

In that
wave

In this
shell

In the
mirror

In these
hands

Mixed into the mortar of our
houses

Not in the
suburbs
of the
deceased.

1988

it's a strange

membrane

that separates us

so often

and

you are right

we have

no

common

language

Perhaps

in bed

after we've

made

love

when I get up and turn around

and see your

smile

and

closed eyes

then we have said something

we both

understand

in the end
it is all
the settling of mud to
fossilize
the outline

the substance
dissolved like brown sugar
in a cup
of
winter cider

Memories drift past us every day
like the places we pass
on the way
to work
or to
the corner store.

They appear in the
middle
of another thought
like a pressed flower found
as you turn
the pages
of an old
book.

You remember picking
the flower

the metaphor becomes
the memory
itself

I wonder what tool it was
that first diminished us?

The chimp
who saw ants crawling on a stick

was he then less?
and not
as
hungry