The Subject Is Sometimes

I’m Defensive and Try to Be Sincere

dear dearest that’s right—I do lay awake

at night all the time it’s night all the time

thinking what you’re hunting but what could you

think about killing and travel—yes, I am doing well

lately suffering from lassitude as the air teems full

iambics and superlatives skittish lilting quiet threaded

quick and empty with ice; tonight your hunting locates

a love song radio marathon—yes, like one hundred

ten degrees mosquito torpor like leaving messages

on windshields graceless language I’m only trying

to tell you that when New Order comes on

I will feel exactly my age—narrative and sloppily

erotic though this lacks theory lacks attack

a firm but informative bite but travel like a bell

like piling one bad course after another

but the past hates a vacuum you absence

your spleen must ache must keep you in at night

it’s always night and your spleen is all you have

beside malady after malady; sometimes the winter

looms so heavily scent-like its concept suffocates

its structures and we’re always left sweaty

and disappointed—sweaty—the hair on our lower

backs reminding us we’ve been hunting all this time

after all—yes, you are hunting you are hunting and I

am standing here with a vat of raw dough purposely

ruined dough waiting for you to come back

Healer

Probably unless someone calls, I will sit here and play

Tetris all day though I know it’s deplorable, me in indoor

Garbage, thumbs ringing, while you are out there, driving

Your sports car, or scooter, into a light breeze. This morning

I woke before the working man only to fall asleep again

On the sidewalk out front, a pair of squirrels pilfering some

Of my hair to build their nest. It is the fall, I know. And I know

You need your Ray Bans to protect your eyes and your hair

Will be a billowed celebration when you return to find me, asleep

In several ways, having drunk all the tea and all the gin you

Left me on your last visit, medicinally. You will put the backs

Of your hands to my forehead, my cheeks, and I will see

The largest living tree on Earth cut through by a rainbow, you

In the smell of woodsmoke. Tell me my miracle.