untitled #33.

although it is summer, I sit in the bathroom waiting
for the red eyes of the heater
to stare back at me
as I feel the sweat prickle behind my knees.

and the only thing I see, is that room outside
and everything in it.

i must stay still now
while I prepare for what might come next.

certain hard days ahead
when I’ll need what I know so clearly
this moment.

i am making use
of the one thing I learned and all the things my father tried to teach me
about the art of memory.

i am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about time
and its difficulties.

i’ll let your faint whisper of questions,
slight discussions and
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.

your scent,
of hinted spice and a wound,
I’ll let that stand for my only distraction
keeping me from writing other things
that hold real necessity.

around, the walls of this room
and everything in it, a voice
goes whispering,
just be careful

your old bloated belly
is the daily cup
of coffee I drink
each morning when i've already forgotten
about you.

the picture of your brother
above the kitchen sink
is when he was young and you were king.
and how you used to build towers
made of recycled vine
that stretched
high above the sky
and eventually fell
all around your feet.

i'm beginning to see the difference
between places and faces.

the sun on that face
of the wall
is god, the face
i can’t see, my soul.

and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater thought
not pertaining to you.

still, one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about this occasion,

i’ll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
that in this room, the only thing gone uncovered
was when we would lie and discover what each other’s bodies
were made for.

now
i’ve forgotten my
idea.

nevertheless,
i continue to look around, this time, just
merely with a glance here and there,
sitting on the carpet in front of the
blue sofa
in a curtainless morning
with my nerves open to the air like
something skinned,
hoping to trick myself into some interior vision,
but all i saw
was a man and a woman in a room across town
making their beds and laughing.

the book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind –
the even numbered pages are
the past, the odd –
numbered pages, the future.

your thoughts are songs for the dreams your brother had about
different ways to die.

my idea
has evaporated.

it's funny, really.

because all of this had
something to do with
with a message or a phone call,
a chance meeting,
a bad fuck that lasted too long

it had something
to do with a room and
everything in it

where
in one afternoon I learned
I could never
love you.