what am i to you

(older scribblings rediscovered.)

“that poem is so you“
pick a flower
find you there
“oh it doesn’t mean anything
just you“

i heard a song, sang your memory
the way you’d want it done

“what’s she like?”
“she’s different in the particulars
but in the ether she’s
just like you”

hard and
    soft and staring past
still this once
                   naked, artless
vaguely conscious of my brilliance to
someone else and new self-
                                          loss

but
what am i to you
smile
oh nevermind
i am still
to you

flow

besides
how lucky we are
to live by the water

sweet mirage

you have an aftertaste
up on the avenue
latent but sound as night is sound
is your untold momentum or
is my attending that which reifies
street players and egyptian dancers
beside mystical barflies
to witness the collision
of these our certain
ordinary forces

you have an avenue somewhere
you oftentimes forget
you are ridiculous here in the commonplace
through trees i taste you with the sky
i wonder
and what attraction do those
other bodies now retain
when you fling gravity or flushed aquamarine
not to mention recognition
with glances only just askew
from canopy dark lashes i covet
in lieu of sunbeams

you propel me
three funny blocks
i’m home

backbeat

everyday
for as long as i can remember
you sing me
better than i know myself
and when you don’t
i will still hear you
far-off and
behind

inhaling light

I have never liked spiders. And even less the kind of people who inhale light and then refuse to relinquish it, planets dead before their time. Instead of fucking just to fuck, I prefer laughing and dancing, spraying from every pore, drinking straight from a cock without batting an eye. I would have made love to him if he had been sunny. But suns turn and don’t roam the streets.

nedjma, the almond

that is not it, at all

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
…

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

it was a lovely trip we had
to make it for the movies

volition

if you listen closely
to the peel-back
you’ll know
i was never all-along
an adhesive entity

if you embrace quickly
the fall-back
you’ll see
hindsight can be one hell
of a beautiful angle

what is mine

smoke
     scent of winter
radiator heat
                  and mirrors

pale blue eyes
                    gales
      stealing breath
and slow-falling snowflakes
on Massachusetts Avenue
      impress my days
                       in the background

these private recollections of
recollecting you
are mine
           alone

and this gorgeous story
      we have lived
                          yours
just as
i always
           intended

strangers

maman died today
camus missed the train
                    sometime following
and me
     never thinking
                        after

like children to rorschach clouds
there are times i self-determine
the shape of elements
i can’t control

we are intertextual
i am living
                fiction
borrowed sentiments from films & novels
are just as much mine as
                               streetlit memories

maman died today
and it rained all day long
i was thinking of you
                              finally
                 wondering why
                          freedom’s just another word
on the radio
                                 for nothing left to lose
four years ago
                          i remembered
you swam the ocean
              sometime following
and maybe you are rain
with all its powers of suggestion
and the torpid fullness
                         of saturated moments

but probably it is no exquisite coincidence
just a book
               i happened to like
before its time

semiography

how could i show you?
                                                                                   it feels good
                                                                      to know you