praise for imperfection

And thank god.

I have found my imperfections again.

And they are what make me human.

And I am so glad

I am human.

lasagne

the lasagne looks almost indecent

in its insistence on abundance

oozing ricotta into the plastic tupperware

glaring at me

and writing this poem I am sure

this place never finished my sentences

but nothing is lost these days

everything is found the answer is laid out for you

without you knowing what question you were asking

(in all likelihood a different one)

why do I want to kill something.

the cleansing wave of destruction

an alternative to perpetual anxiety

and anger at things I cannot change,

I would take some abundance now.

I would take some, and then some more,

and then some more,

and then some

more.

little things

i.

do you remember then?

those viennese mornings

light and airy in the living room

reading poems to each other

as if to wipe away the dust of sadness

that accumulates in sleep

to hear you laugh or better

to try, a thing I could not fail to fall in love with

showing someone you love something you love

feeling they may one day love it too

feeling they may already do

and us just two americans

as the austrian sunlight filtered in through the double paned windows

first cold then unbearably hot

the trams incessant on the street below after the midnight pause

and a poem like an anchor

a gift given at the same time to each other

a little thing

and life is made of little things.

ii.

now I wake from dreams of you

where we never quite kiss on the mouth

and my eyes half-open come to the daylight

hungry for the fantasy of your body

for the fantasy of your mind knowing reality

never has and will live up to this

the true knowing of the dream kiss.

iii.

and you want it to be you don't you?

you had asked me

looking back on that moment 

I feel such full astonishment

even then I knew I was living

something.

And I stormed from the room and refused

to give you what you were asking for:

an admission of guilt

goaded out of me with jealousy

poking the bear that slept between us

that held us each in one heavy lidded paw.

vi.

there is no answer

but I think of you now

as I write a poem and now

that everything is broken

and will not be fixed and

yet amid the angles

the jutted body-like bones of broken limbs

the glinting of 

little things.

a moment to believe

Worse than a fever thoughts of you in my mind
Like it could be fixed if I prove that I’m right
Broken like the limbs on the trees
Nothing special, just time, that familiar disease
It takes a moment to believe

You say you think of us the same and don’t see me flinch
To me one of a kind is the only thing worth being
The closed bathroom door like a knife in the chest
A symbol of your eternal unreachableness
When all I asked was to be held

Whipping past half promises I cannot keep
If I do they’ll destroy me
So used to holding on so tightly
Didn’t want to see what it does to me
What it’s doing

[found on the back of a painting from the spring]

There is such a strong silence here today
It takes over my room
My jackets on the hook
My pictures on the wall
It says everything without words
It holds everything without words

I am not simple
I never promised to be

The danger of intimacy
is the pain of misunderstanding
and that is such a 
cutting wound

healing does not happen
quickly
and it will not happen
all at once
Fear is the enemy
of all resolution

Please I am begging
you in the only
way I know how
To try

amager fælled

How do I feel like myself?

It seems to require isolation.

This morning I cycle through the woods,

things I see:

fuzzy cows with long horns on each side

moving—in my eyes they look like machines, robot creatures

almost, and it takes me telling myself again to remember 

they, too, are alive (what does this say except perhaps

I have been spending too much time in the city);

also a pheasant crossing the path, then fluttering away,

I apologize for the disturbance, a "beautiful" loosing my lips

at its colored feathers, maroon, brown, green, ruffled, unruffling;

also soft hairy spheres—witch hazel? my mind offers up, I am not sure

softness along the brown branches on the path;

and things I hear: is it the wind or is it the snowflakes

falling lightly, constant,

all around me.

Bad Words

Running over barbs in my mind

Things you said once I repeat to myself many times

Pain is quick, bodily, unkind

Harder to feel alright

Say I deserve better

But you’re talking to yourself

Not about my needs

About wishing you were someone else

Don’t you think I know self loathing?

Insufficiency an ocean

Criticisms cycle on the shore

Easier to say you want less than you want more

And I don’t need more half truths

Wasted time or you

Misconfigured and uneasy

Saying what you can’t not what you could be

how do you love people for who they are?

for everything they cannot give you?

the imperfect answer to a question that seems so simple

yet is it not beautiful that you can never know the answer?

would it not be boring to be given the same answer you had imagined?

everything is slightly off kilter and I find myself

shaking my head as though I might be able to right it

in that simple movement of my chin up and down

as though rotation were easy enough

I am changing and you are changing

and it is at different speeds and we try to hold our changing together

in the intersections of shared glances, analyzing other couples

half bottles of wine and music and the heavy breath before you finish.

all endings and beginnings and you tell me you cannot be what you think it is 

that I want that I need but that is so limiting and boring and

what are we building, your apology incomplete

not what I would have said, but voiced in your own way

and I see, at least now, in this moment: you trying.