Bygones

You have passion,
he’d said.
You lack warmth,
claimed another.
You need
said the one with the beard.

I am a link,
I’d said.
I am trade,
to the other.
Don’t be fooled,
to the one with the beard.

We are sex,
he’d said.
You are brains,
grieved another.
We are one,
vowed the one with the beard.

We are jackals,
I’d said.
I am eggs,
to the other.
We are none,
to the one with the beard.

 
 

There You Are

See there, across the mountain's back,
a sever in a field of wheat
or just the right amount of wine—

one little tilt, and there you are.
So, listen, there's this Spanish man
who lives just east of everything;

he's offering me cigarettes
as though he knows I closet-smoke
and fell in love with sorrow and

he knows it never ends.
Not only that, my living room
is very strange. I wake sometimes

at dead of night and rearrange
my things. Mornings, the orange light
crowds in and claims the ordinary

couch and rugs right back again.
But night is fine for finding tilts.
Your face is hardly changed.