You Drift and Wonder Why

Where the heart should be a dense briar, bad medicine, confederate bills.

Yawning, tired at the wrong time, middle of the day, staggering around exhausted, confused by exhaustion, worried I am letting someone down but who, et cetera.

How as a child I enjoyed sewing classes, made a red stuffed octopus that I kept for years, no idea in the end what happened to it. 

This anger, my god, what has anybody done to deserve it.

I fell in love with a woman scooping ice cream at Ben & Jerry's in Burlington Vermont, 1986 or 87, everybody was like ask her out but that was never the point, the point was the poems I wrote about loving her at a distance, in other words, longing was the point, longing is always the point.

Roosters crying out in rain.

Editing this or another sentence nearly to death.

My body subject now to chronic stressors, not even sleep gets me away.

In dreams, three nights running, she comes to me naked and kisses me, the kisses are both ordinary and transcendent, and I wake puzzled and hard, and the puzzlement becomes frustration, why is this so difficult.

Dad making fun of Neruda's Residence on Earth, the title of course because he certainly never read it. 

Serving bad gods, doing their bidding without question, avoiding looking at consequences et cetera. 

In relationship with agitation.

I offer to drive her to Cape Cod, dreading every aspect of it but as always willing to die if that's what being a good boy means.

Laundry drying on racks in the hay loft.  

What becomes easier when we wade through warm shallows, not worrying about restless hungry sharks in the deeps.

In the old days I was often drunk in dangerous places, and people died with whom I drank, but I did not die, though I will, in time.

It takes a while to get to twenty sometimes, you go back and edit, you drift and wonder why you bother. 

Yes requires no somewhere inside of it.

We called it a game but it wasn't, it was more like a war, the origins of which were hidden from us, outcomes of which were never discussed, and yet one in which we were compelled to engage, even now. 

How far away we are, how lost.