Rêve burlesque

 i fear my dreams are cursing me,
 damning me to a life of déjà-vu,
 half-rememberings that cloud my thoughts
 and muddy my vision.
 i feel as if i am wading through
 a creek, chest-high,
 that fog interrupts my sight
 and all i can feel or think
 is the slow, slow, slow
 trod of each foot, each pace,
 as they make their way
 through so much muck
 like clockwork.
 in a way what i seek
 i already know,
 or at least can find when i venture to.
 the difficulty is in choosing the course,
 of not falling prey to logic or superstition
 and letting thought forge
 the path most suited.
 it is hard to achieve this silence,
 this lack, its own creation;
 the totality of my knowledge
 flounders in this murk,
 inviting my eye. i seek
 its intimacy as i seek
 transgression,
 ‘til i again find myself
 face-to-face with
 the unknown.

Sense

 there is so much i must get out.

 i have fallen a little bit in love today,
 though i knew him from before.
 i once found him naive;
 a boyish, hot-blooded adolescent,

 but then two years makes marks
 and shapes things in ways
 impossible to foresee, opens
 eyes clouded with ego and superstition.

 when he speaks the rhythm of
 his voice is like music,
 maple syrup rolling over
 me and coating my skin with sugar.

 at the bar he brushes against me,
 i prickle, wrinkle up like bath fingers,
 and i know there is nothing left i can do,
 know my body has lay down in surrender.

 at the table, we sit across from one
 another, bodies meeting tête à tête.
 our shoulders salute as if in greeting,
 sly eye contact we both perceive.

 i want to devour him and i think he knows this.
 there is something he knows,
 always has, that i do not.

 he used to tell stories.

 when i first met him i remember
 being captivated by his beauty.
 his thick black hair, dark eyes,
 and facial structure equal to that of any print model.

 and boy did he talk. talked and talked.
 i wish i could remember the stories he would tell,
 seemingly unrelated anecdotes about his family
 or his upbringing, his hometown or his hobbies.
 i should highlight the seemingly.
 i always laughed at his stories.
 they were beautiful.

 once he came over to my apartment;
 we drank tea on my tomato red couch and
 his silence made me uncomfortable.
 his eyes saw too much of me
 and i wanted to retreat.

 later i heard a story about him
 loudly fucking some girl in the shower
 while his roommate was home;
 i didn’t talk to him after that.
 he confronted me, in his
 gentle, careful way, and i told him the truth.
 he was uncomfortable, without words.
 we didn’t speak much again.

 now, i am breathless.
 i sat next to him on the car-ride home,
 our legs touching only slightly at first
 and then more, shin and thigh
 meeting through denim and
 waves through and through my body.

 at one point in the night,
 he looked at me and said that we’re
 on the same wavelength.

 i hope i don’t read
 too much into that.
 i want to read
 so much into that.

Ramble

 i have used you so long as a metaphor,
 my own fill-in-the-blank,
 that i struggle to remember our beginnings.
 was it simply your wanting that drew me to you,
 your swift ability to take?
 for too long i yearned for a man i do not know,
 whose hollowness i used as a mirror
 for my own shortcomings,
 but these latter have grown too heavy,
 and i no longer delight in the thought of you.
 my childish obsession, need for possession,
 all of this started--and will end--with me.
 i cannot fathom you as more than fragments
 of my own imaginative longing,
 the lies i told myself in the aim of satiety.
 once i wished you dead, but now i see
 the parody of this performance.
 you cannot kill that which never lived,
 nor have that which never was.