Op.106

Before the snow

Still but for the distinctive and ever evolving Crack
Of leather soles on imprecise brick.
I pause to watch lights turn off room-by-room
All neighbors — all anonymous.

Start forward again with no set goal but the knowledge somehow —
It is not yet time to return
To the safe isolation of my forth floor walkup.
The streets offer a different isolation —
A semblance of purpose counterfeited by motion
And opportunity to observe.

Turn left into the warm domesticity of Louisburg Square
I spot the steady glow of Christmas lights
Pressed against a window by the perhaps overeagerly erected tree.
Advent begins tomorrow and yet the holiday traces spotted
Through windows and over doors
Seem alien and wrong; the year holds too much unfinished
Business to be ready for forced jollity.

Remember my hot chocolate but am too late;
The windless gelid air has thieved the lingering warmth.
Moments ago I burned my mouth in haste;
We push too soon or wait too long —
In both, we lose.

Catch a glimpse of the muraled sitting room so sparse
In furnishing and yet vibrant.
I imagine being young and home sick from school —
Fever dreams on the sofa of safaris to the jungle
Painted in two-dimensional majesty
On gently curving walls. Dreams are easy
Outdoors on the last day of November.

Realize that to be lonely is not to be alone.
There is no logical operator capable of reducing
One to the other; despite a plebeian tendency to make
No differentiation. Rather, loneliness is a no more straightforward
State of existence than is love, or happiness.

Perhaps the greatest loneliness
Is loneliness that is not shared.

A sleep akin to death

It is unfair that trees were granted the gift of sleep
akin to death,
their talent of taking such needed rest
to escape the
bitter misfortunes of Winter.

We poor humans, not granted this boon must
lie awake and moan with the wind and cry
with the jagged crystalline perfection
of window frost.

Midnight lacrimosa

3 A.M. finds me. It had little trouble for I do little

but sit and watch the shadows cast by the dying

low-wattage bulb.

3 A.M. and I cannot yet temper my hold on sentience — relax, accept oblivion.

Now is not the time to try for sleep.

I would wash dishes but do not trust the knives. There is little one can trust at 3 A.M.

Verdi in the wind, a soloist’s wail lofted by moaning choir.

You can hear them:

the tears.

There is no reason. No tragic tale nor darkened thought. No reason but it is 3 A.M. And I;

I am awake.

Flavors of loneliness. Some are more, complex —

one must learn to mark the difference,

as 3 A.M. tears do not fall for loneliness, but rather

into loneliness. A loneliness attainable only when the late to bed are already lost and the

early to rise have yet to yawn.

Draw the shades, light the lights — create a world in which there are

No people.

The shadows now cowering in closets and corners I run water until hot and with

too much soap I begin

the mindless act of cleaning.

Scrubbing soothes and running water fills the air.

White noise — a blanket to smother racing tired thoughts. The knives have lost

their power. Or have they?

One cannot fear when one cannot feel.

But there, right there, now in plain sight. Yes. For what greater fear

then fear of

Not feeling.

Oblivion.

In death we do not feel. There is but nothingness. And so by reason,

Life

Must be the presence of feeling. And so with loss of feeling comes

Death.

One cannot argue with such clarity of thought. For at 3 A.M. the symmetry of circles

Wins.

Feel dammit! Feel!

Whether pain or joy or love or hate. Just FEEL!

The hot water burns. The knife slips and striking the sink, hurts the ears.

[…]

Last dish suddenly clean. The knives safely sheathed and stored away.

A calmness sets in. No longer a lack, but a presence. For with a tired joy I realize —

I am alive.