On the straw of fatalists 

The lighted star-foam flows. 

There is no absence that cannot replaced. 

                                    Rene Char, “The Chain” 

 

Sometimes.  Sometimes I think your hatred for yourself is exquisitely balanced by your love of death-defying acts. 

January…January. 

You ask me to come and crawl into your clean sheets with you.  You make love to me, and then – you weep until your eyes are the famous plus signs. 

As if you were my child, I hold you and tell you that tears will build up in your ears if you keep crying – until little men begin to fish in boats in your head?”   

 

Do you want that? 

 

Something happened.  Before this.  I thought about having 300 years.  You asked, “You mean for today?” “Or for life?” As if there were any difference between one day in a life and life’s time.  But I mean both. “What are you thinking,” you ask me.  A few tears trickle down my temples.  “Did you have another dream?”  “Are you thinking about your father?” “No, I say, 

“about you.”  “About mortality.”  Now I can’t remember what made you start to cry.  We were lying there, and the room looked serene.   The color of January.  White and hollow.   Like the ghost of an owl.  I said, “Isn’t the white light beautiful?” And you said, “Yes, it’s Northern light.” 

 

Have I made a theatrical career about time I don’t have? 

 

Sometimes you scare me.  I want to feed your hunger.  And bounce back from it too.  You say you’re like a wild puppy.  But once while I was running I saw you as a lean grey coyote baying into the moon.  As if you’d lost the earth and wanted the moon to caress  

you. 

Sometimes you say I’m a hot hot star in your bed.  “What color would you like me to be?” you ask. I say, “blue.” 

 

Do you know you hurt me sometimes.  Sometimes it’s like a needle afterwards.  Your back is my Paris.  Your mouth is my childhood. 

Your hands ring bells in my blood.  You are the same one as all the ones I lost.