54

You can put me in prison
and replace my name with a number
You can patch it to my uniform.
But at least give me a new one
when I'm released from the room
so dark and so quiet
the door may not be there,
or anything else behind it.
Because I haven't been to space before,
and when I come back,
I don't want to be
the only thing that hasn't changed.

53

I was alone when I laid down
in the middle of my bedroom floor
and all I did was close my eyes
when I felt the creak of the wood behind me
your hand on my arm.
The next day you wouldn't remember
how I am
when no one knows that I'm awake
or the shadow the lamp makes on my back
when I'm where I shouldn't be
so I tried to fall asleep
before I had to feel you leave.

52

I don't want to control my limbs anymore
I want waves to make me tumble
so I can only think to breathe
I want to sleep without a dream
while you sit by my bed
and look at me

51

I changed while you were in Moscow,
or when you studied in Kiev,
where you met the man at the bar
who asked you if you were happy.

And I changed when you went
the deepest in the woods you've ever been,
and when you found in that antique store
something perfect for a second,
but then you'd looked at it too long.

When you returned, I was different,
waiting there on your porch.
You'd decided, somewhere in the mountains,
that I could have left if I was tired.

50

You were away enough to be anyone
and here enough to be real
and on the phone I decided
it didn't matter what you said
as long as you were like me
with your back against a wall
sitting on a bed

and as long as your words didn't matter
they were always the right ones
just don't ever let me see the place
you take your phone calls from.

49

You'll be sad when I get a job,
he said, when I can't cook for you anymore
and then didn't look up from his plate
because he knew I wouldn't smile
And he stayed at the table until he was done
and I had been gone for a while
He ran out of newspaper articles to read
and mail to render junk
Falling asleep with his head on the table
next to a sticky plate
planning out tomorrow's dinner

48

One day I'll meet you for a second time
and this year will be a photograph
undeveloped, in a drawer
that will still be in this house
though we won't live here anymore

47

Even the sunniest of days
start with the frost on the windshield
and breath we can watch
We run home at night before the cold
The cold we know well
but it's quicker now
like it has some place to be
when it's not in our skin
But I think it waits in the trees
to be enclosed in the dark

46

Go, and say it was your choice.
You can even leave a parting note,
but make sure I don't find it.
I want to read the old letters
in the same place on the stairs
where I read them over and over
the first time, years ago
and blush in the places you knew I would.
And I won't be here if you call,
not with your face changing with your voice.
But I'll remember you in spring
from a place you've never been
that appeared when I built those
parts of you I needed you to have.

45

You forgot how you were just a moment ago
and you asked me to pass the bread
as if that was the confession you meant.
You still wouldn't blink,
you still held your head down
and weren't afraid of the screech of your knife across your plate
But you don't know why
and neither do I
so I passed the bread and forgot the hand
that still gripped the edge of my chair

44

I saw you crying from the doorway
I was years and miles away
I was taken; you had aged
You held nothing in your hands
And you curled up like the child
That we never thought to have

My throat cringed
And I had to sleep

When I woke you were returning
from the market
You'd fixed your hair
And you told me about your coupons
and who you ran into on the line

43

You must have changed since dinner time
You weren't much of a reader then
When before passing down the pitcher
You poured a glass for yourself,
drank it, and poured another
But I hear you across the hall
slowly turning pages
like you're afraid to rip them
I listen while I watch
the new triangles your lamplight
made on my floor

42

I didn't drive you to the airport
two years ago
but I'm going to pick you up now.
You'll have to be a cardboard box
or I'll have to become something soon
before I get there.
But maybe I'm a cargo train
and I know a bunch of you
though they're really all just you.
Really we're alone on the tracks.
While some of you were left across the sea,
and the tracks go straight ahead for miles.

41

After the storm the puddles form
Under the corners of our roof
We can't go outside yet
We've got no place to go
And we're still cold from the drops on the windows
I don't remember what the time was
When that branch fell to the road
It seems like it's been there for years
But I've been next to the window
And the sky's been the same all day
And you sit there at the table
Like that was the last rain

40

The world's too big to tackle
unless we call it something small
like a pebble on the sidewalk
and put it in a jar
and place it on a bookshelf
so we can watch it from our beds
while we hear planes full of people
who watch towns and towns go by
seeing roofs and streets between the clouds
then asking for another ginger ale

39

Don't take the universe yet
One day it won't be enough
You'll find the bottom
Because you found it in the ocean

You want to be amazed
By your fingers on the keys
When they remember what you saw
In the stars outside the city

38

I've never heard you speak before
You're only talking to yourself
Next to me, the sound of your turning page
Is incomplete without a voice
What you hear when you read
Carnivals and warships and echoing doors
I wish you'd say something small
So I don't have to be like you

37

You had only known my eyes
I was tired; I forgot
that I don't know how to cry

And you found me holding my knees
making a pillow of the wall

You asked me who I was
I admitted, it is me

But still you stood in the doorway
confused at the thin red branches
in the white of my eyes

36

I made you dinner at my apartment,
I shuffled sideways to my chair
between the wall and the table

You told me I deserved to live someplace bigger
Then you left-
and let the city have you.
You knew I'd be home;
I had to put your food in containers.
Maybe you'll have it when you come back

35

Don't sit in the mud in your favorite jeans
They told you not to search
There isn't enough time
For all the forests where it always rains
And then the ones where it always snows
But you knew that a year in the evergreens
Would gain you their trust
And get you their secret
But looking now at the same pine needles
And patches of dirt
You know a forest has little to hide
You've changed for the trees
Now go home and sit on the porch

34

Gerard on the steps with a cigarette
steps to nothing, really
but a nightclub at noon
he'll offer a tour to anyone
who cocks their heads in curiosity
at the somber structure on the edge of Manhattan
behind Gerard's deceiving throne
he wants to tell them he's been to Berlin
he wants to meet a family
and prove he is a good father
and as he gives them his card and lets them go
he imagines them in the late hours
when the young people squeeze through crowds
with drinks in their hands
finding him in his office upstairs
and taking him home for dinner

33

I didn't watch her grow old
Counting only years not walks in gardens
Forgotten groceries
Sweaters and comfortable shoes
I didn't think of it when she stared
At the utensil drawer before picking one
In the car to Pittsburgh
I think I saw what I missed
In the rear view mirror
The face of women who read to children
Then go home to a dim lit house
With a flowered table cloth
In the kitchen where dinner used to be

32

Use a mountain to draw a tree
Figure that they are the same
They don't swim beneath the skin
They're not phased by the breath of the moon

Blankets hover over people
Who hover over beds
It's easy in the dark
To pretend they're alone in their rooms

31

I remember last May
with a flower in my hair,
when the rain came when we wanted it
The eternal sound of chirping
that became the scenery
Even the night time air was warm
drifting through the shutters
mixing with the wind
who's melody lulled me to sleep
I remember the chirping
The days I heard the birds
are the ones that I remember

30

Just let me go with you
I'll stay ten steps behind, I swear
You won't even hear me over the cars
And if we go to the country, I'll take off my shoes

Just let me go with you.
Because I didn't like it
When suddenly you had a beard,
a new shirt, a new reflection in your eyes

Just let me go with you.
I know you don't need me, but I don't need you either.
I just want to go for a walk
with the back of your new shirt
and watch that crease across your back fold a thousand times

Just let me go with you.
You don't have to turn around,
I'm telling you now, I'll still be there
outside the diner, when you watch the waitress walk away
and smile at your hands

29

The truth is I'm a liar.
Is that a start?
I hope you can love me now
and tell me you're one too.
It's the truth if I believe it, I'd say,
But I can't believe it.
I mean that this is all the truth I'll give.
I can't tell you about what didn't happen
my summer in the sky.

28

The street was one way then another
walking to and from his house.
He had never missed a day
of doing what was planned
but I found him in his yard,
Digging to the pipes with a shovel
meant for leaning on your garage.
Proof, he said, eyebrows frozen downward,
that you don't need a reason.
Two girls on tippy toes peeked out
the window hoping for treasure.
He met their eyes quickly and then went on,
thrusting the shovel
to the beat of the vein in his forehead.

27

It was about time I
ran into you. In the diner
cross town where neither of
us go. That's probably why I'd
just thought of you
a week before, when the commercials came on.
The green leaves had turned all different colors. I forgot
which one was you. I raked every day
but the snow melted them
anyway. I'd driven in a
circle to avoid the same route home. I'd begun to
notice all the children.
I'd learned something staring
at the sky. Time because we
could stand there letting winter
air prove to us we were breathing

26

I should have gone skiing with you
this morning. I was up at nine, but
stayed in bed until twelve. Mom's shoes
would have fit fine, really, with one more
pair of socks. What did the trail
look like?
I imagine lumps of
snow on evergreens. A skinny trail
of green and white. All is quiet,
except for the hollow shift of your
skis that is there then gone.
From now on, the snow will only melt, I'm sure.
You say there hasn't been this much in years.

25

Your father reaches across the table
for the butter next to me
and clears his throat.
You must have had thinner blinds
and a whiter table cloth when
you used to come home from school for lunch.
A deer head sticks out of the wall
like the only thing in the room.
I'm not sure where we are now.
Who would I be if I asked?

24

I returned from the moon
with rocks in my pockets.
I went home for a while,
I'd thought it would look different
with stars behind my eyes.
I didn't feel the tickle of the first morning grass of spring
or smell the soft lilacs in the grove.
The rocks in my pockets
left soot marks on hands.

23

A new layer of earth formed by rubble
Children climb through it like deep snow
Life their knees to heir chests
Look down intently for already made holes for their feet
Every building looks the same
Underneath their feet
The sun doesn't understand
The breeze is just enough to catch the dust
From the floors and walls that were crushed
It swims around the faces
The pieced that won't be found

22

Charles Pier
the people here
will be about to leave all night.
A family per bench slobbers on ice cream cones
and plans only their next bites.
Next to shiny-leaved bushes,
A smell of cold cigarette.
Crackly red feet pound cheap sandals into the gravel.
They squint through their dark lenses
at the sun
between the skeleton
of the forgotten roller coaster on the bay.

21

Daytime in the office slowly simmers down to dusk
Taking along the briefcases and knee-length skirts.
The atmosphere of chatter that hung over the fax machines
lowers down to static silence, at eye level.
How nice it must be to follow the day,
thought the man who stayed for the moon,
to never know the scorching glow of a desk lamp on the walls.

20

I came across a girl
who I'd heard of once before
in a booth at the diner
speaking to her menu.
She sat at the edge of the seat,
I figured she must be
the woman who speaks her thoughts.
I watched her from the bar
as she made comments
on the decor
and was amazed by infinity
I walked over as she told the window
she missed her brother
and said she wondered if the couple in the booth
was laughing at her.
She saw me coming, said
I think I know your question,
that she'd be shocked if she was wrong,
and the answer was that she was just afraid to be alone.

19

I made a sculpture out of you
with comic book pages and billiard cues
and everything else you've spoken of.
A few things to make it pretty.
I molded your hand to fit with mine.

I let the phone ring when it was you.
I took you on a boat where you can't call me
and tell me I built you wrong.
I think I did a good job.
I even got that ring around the blue of your eyes.

18

Ducked into a plane
with bags hanging from my limbs
and flew back to my corner of the east coast.
Shouldered open the door
I'd last seen weeks before
just to wish I'd cleaned up a little.
I need home
I need the houses and fields I counted from the plane
between me and that book on the floor
that I stare at but it doesn't move,
away from the clutter of a misused closet

17

For a second there,
when a passing plane kept the sun from our eyes,
a battle had just been won
somewhere
a hurricane had begun on a land
the clouds had their shapes for a reason
somewhere
somebody shouted then just wasn't there
A flying saucer was seen from a house with no phone
by a life meant to try and prove it
Your hand on your neck
and your head heavy on your shoulder
and the shadow of a plane
and my memory of a carnival the night before it rained

16

Nothing can ever work because you are wrong,
says the used car salesman to everyone in the TV.
A man in Japan says fish is the answer,
his son agrees.
And somewhere not important
a frog and a mountain
disagree on the size of an airplane.
Yesterday I was in a house
with six new faces I didn't look at.
Today I am the only one
ever to have been me and on a boat at sea.
Somewhere there's a field
that doesn't need to be fixed.
I can't find it.
I can't find it on a boat.

15

Your house in Massachusetts could be anything
but it's not you in that blue shirt
that must have been your favorite
seeing my letter between junk mail
on your kitchen table and smiling
and doing it all over again
until something beeps and I seal the envelope
and stay sitting for a while.

14

Helicopters and chainsaws couldn't drive
my voice out from my head.
I'm sick of it.
It hasn't changed in a while.
Now I don't care much for birds,
but I'd already brought the binoculars,
so I sat under a tree and looked through
and still didn't like birds.
Turned them around and made everything far away.
Decided on how things should be.
No one looked up from their newspapers or desks
to see my declaration to the faraway birds.
Picked up my things and walked back to my car
leaving no imprint on the damp dirt path.

13

You saw me with the light off
playing with a little flame
and sneered like I was trying
to prove something to the walls.
You marched me across the floorboards
to the other side of the city
holding me with your arm extended
with the tips of your fingers
like someone else's tissue

12

I want to know you still
when you've been to all the placed you've mentioned
realized that the job you had was the one that you'd keep
wondered if that was good
wondered if you'd done anything right
finally grown a beard and didn't need it anymore
hated yourself
forgotten who you were before you were a father
become your father
decided about love
I want to forget where we met,
to identify only with the store front
where we meet
and say nothing that can change anything

11

As your kitchen closed in
you threw a can of peas through the
window which proceeded to shatter
and make you cry. And now you
know something was wrong, that there
is something you can fix with
a broom.
But after it was swept
you were in a big bright kitchen
older than you were before.

10

They're hoarding around the coffee shops
Laughing in the streets
Falling asleep with phone's to their ears
to the sound of someone else's silence
Turning on the radio
When they wake up with themselves
Taking the fastest route
To the nearest main road
But the night that they don't fall asleep
They shiver in unease
Hearing every crackle in the walls
Realizing in the dark
That the only thing sure is themselves

9

No one will ever walk past my door
It's the last one on the highest floor
If there were another room past mine
It'd be a moldy library
Or really just a shelf of books
M-O on Western philosophy
And I'd smell their soggy burns
And pick the brownest one
Take it cross town to that diner
Where no chair is the same
Under a napkin dispenser-
Walk back past all the doors back to mine
Dragging the mismatched chairs and tables
And their contents back with me

8

We built a house together
and squinted at it from the sidewalk.
I took a picture when the sun was behind the chimney
and I said, it's yours, and you held my wrist.
Let it see all the seasons
and sink into the dirt.
I'll come back when there's a thunderstorm
so we'll have something to talk about.
I guess you'll be different then.

7

Do I have to jump out of a plane
for today to be different than yesterday?
I want to be someplace I haven't been
like in my kitchen with you at the counter
finding the spoon in the first drawer you try
and closing it with your hip.

6

Tuesday night in a 7-11.
His shift began on a stool
with no place to put his hands.

He looked out a window and couldn't tell
what was outside
and what was a reflection.

7-11 flickered in cheap neon lights.
He blinked,
and it appeared on the wall

which was white,
and the floor was white,
and the mat by the door was gray,

and whoever made it that way
must be home with a book and kids
warming up coffee he'd bought when it was still light out.

5

Today I saw a jar of yellow paint
and then I saw my thumb
so I painted it yellow
and wondered if I'd understand
why I did those things
if I knew the meaning of life
and then I thought of space
and gave up
and instead thought of the smell of paint
and how long it takes to dry.

4

February decided to stay a while, so we
got used to salting the frozen rain
on the doorstep. Crunchy grass began our
days. Our heavy coats never made it back
to the closet. I knew that if you called
to me the hot water must be done, and if your
guitar was away when I walked
in the door, you'd heard me
coming. Your words were like
footsteps upstairs. You walked like you
were facing the wind. The radiator
covered midnight silence. I'd fall asleep
aware of the light
in the bathroom where you shaved your
growing beard.

3

The distance to our house to the nearest tenth of a mile
He runs through numbers, still focused on the road.
How long it will take-
The nearest post office-
How he found it-
The thing about post offices-
ENOUGH. I could say,
Now tell me what I know.
Because that poem you wrote
Wasn't about my mother or the post office,
But you wrote it anyway.
And I'd have to look him in the eye,
Say good bye, I am going to be
Someone else now, then look ahead
And wonder where his eyes are.

2

If she could just skim the surface
of the barren sea
and smooth over the black wave

She'd know for good
she'd rather be
where wind can whip you

Then set you free
and if she weren't convinced
just one more inch

Of skin she'd let descend

But reason remains in a hazy place
and one panging touch is not enough
to compare numb water to numb wind

1

The man with a finger in his mouth
will rule the world
As long as no one saw him there
in a navy blue suit
sucking a lonely thumb
Glancing toward the vent
making sure he still has a secret