I seem to have
forgotten my lines...
Walk with me parallel
a while
Pickup perhaps then I'll
remember
I have no steady, no
gyroscope to keep me up
At night the sleepcycle rides
circles under my eyes
I haven't decided how
to draw us
All of us--everyone we
meet--
Intersect at certain
points,
Moments of meaning
Millions of points where we touch,
hold hands
Share a song, kiss, secret, or glance
Sometimes we run
parallel for a time
Walking a bold line
through space time
As everything spins we
manage to keep step
But it's all temporary
Our made-in-China
shoes scuff the graph
paper as we approach infinity
And what nonsense is
that
A closeness, a net?, a
communion, or an empty
space, a universal alone eternity?
I scribble along fast like a polygraph lie as I, trying
not to forget to breathe
Trying not to veer wildly
like my chestbeat
and double back, cross myself,
My God I've been here
before
I was hoping we could
tie the knot
But the telephone line
was not long enough
You ride along another
axis now,
Existing, loving,
singing, unseen
I always dreamed of
your trajectory
Plotting it out,
stoking you to dream
Your truck spiraled
out
A flat line, an
ellipsis
Of rocks in the
desert, memorial gardens
I take pictures
Make five-year plans
See lines in
everything:
Handprints, walls,
sunsets, trees
Each barcode a stanza,
Every vine and weed
draws shapes
And you and me
We part here,
branching out like
family trees approaching infinity
And although like
particles we may
collide, we will never occupy the same
space and time
At best our lines run
tangent
But not yet, I reach
You're out of reach
You're gone
And I'm still writing
on writing on moving out past the sea
Living, yes, writing
reading speaking moving always moving
