The Compass Points

Suddenly you find yourself  
Wide open to your absence,  
As the empty barrels in a half-loaded revolver  
 
They dressed you in a hippie shawl  
(Jesus fuck) even flowers in your hair,  
Turned on, tuned in, dropped out  
Into dream of desolate streets Millennium  
 
Whored myself to your eulogy  
‘memories will remain in the grass and rain,'  
Just wanted to shake you awake and slap you  
Sing you the latest Morrissey song  
 
Was the rope your final joke  
As you just hated hanging around  
 
Cavernous low  
Come speak to me in the deadlock of design  
Paled with the hollow leads that break you  
Missed opportunities forsake the branches that hover over your crypt  
Sail into the wind young spirit  
Make the while unduly mild  
Specious, only unto a flit of a whisper  
I lean into this place  
In the grass  
Where only flowers grow  
Cast a presence on my shoulder  
Tell me the wisdom of the skies where you linger  
Cause slowly a short halo drum  
Speak wild where your feet never tread  
I’ll claim a channel on your airways  
I speak volumes of our times tethered  
Tell God I once withered  
I’ll be there soon to greet you  
 
In the electric hive that is a human sea,  
I am alone in three dimensions  
 
In this intractable electric shadow  
On a liquid crystal screen,  
I am alone in two dimensions  
 
When I have no words  
For the pain of your loss,  
Only my heart opening its bruised hands,  
Palms raised to catch you,  
To hold whatever,  
In the singularity of this moment,  
You cannot,  
I am rendered down  
To a single dimension,  
And yet,  
Am there with you  
 
Though miles of elliptical curvature  
Separate us,  
I am here,  
I am there,  
Alone with you  
 
In the quiet of four o’clock,  
I keep watch.  
Sleep’s seductive shadow  
makes finger puppets on the walls  
I’ve built, just outside my skin.  
My grief is sharpest here,  
bringing blood to the surface  
to bruise in fist-sized indentations,  
I see swirling galaxies of plum  
and crimson.  
It’s almost beautiful.    
It hurts and It hurts again,  
every time I touch it.    
I read your words over and over,  
the balm I keep applying  
to ease the tremendous ache  
of living beyond my roots.    
I make poultice of the air  
between my empty arms  
and the sustenance you offer up  
with your visitant embrace