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