a secret! don't tell:
a serendipity.

No wonder someone was able to fall in love with the word.
It falls from your mouth like edict.

The life of your words when you aren't speaking them.
What deeds you do when you don't pay mind.

He extended his key
and it turned the lock
and fit the lock of a place
90 miles further away.

(That is what you learned today from the paper's wedding announcement.)

9 years ago, you are waking up unaccustomedly early to watch the news
and you see dust fall from buildings in advent of war.
9 years later, the man takes your shoulders in between his palms to contain you.

Later, still.
Someone else notices with precision your sad demeanour.
'Don't pick up the glass,' you say, as he comes silently to your aid.

'I like to do that.'

And nothing.

And nothing.

still life:

Winter.
Bright.

In the late evening, I sat propped,
sad statue,
tilting my head so the refuse of water ran, evaporatingly
in whorls.
Spoke to my self the whole night --

Measured the fall of snow.

Remembered to unarm anger
(I taught him what he knows,
the several-atoms-thin facing of me.)

Inward movement impossible.
We spected, politely, on outsides.


I tried to lower myself out of love with the same ease.
Drank and thought to appeal to him, dear object.

Revised standards:
broke through the old anger like puncturing a skin.