Jerusalem

I saw the smoke go up.
I wasn't the smoke.
I was the afterword.
Ash, we wondered.

And the ram that undid the door
to the city, the flummox of dreams
snapping brittle and dry
like tinder afloat. Fire-sea:

what happens after you die?
You don't. It's the others who
wink out, one by one. Then
you go alone into the salt.

This then is how we are doing love:

a woman
crawling on her belly
in a minefield

lusting after boundaries.

Under whatever kind of thing

you’re talk talking about I think

you might do good to get your self

the thing its self

is unraveling

the revealing light of the dark

times the none times the one time we stood

on the mountain

with cigs

and I fell over the edge of love that is death

and the only one none thing

I remember is the

nothing of your lips.

the mirror is not a mirror

what's the light, that subliminal breath
being two things at once

what's being, the door ajar
waiting for nothing
when no one arrives
and un-opens the un-opened

opining: sometimes a phone
is not a phone
sometimes
a fire is not a fire
sometimes there is a woman
in the mirror

she, on the other other side
reaching through

dust of drywall in her fingers

innocence/experience

I’m not lying when I say I don’t remember the world

before September 11, 2001.

I had memories but they all seem, now

a decade removed,

like a wall cloud with no beginnings

and no endings,

as if Claude Monet had attempted a portrait of YHWH

and gotten Sinai just right.

Whatever the 21st century is, I remember

it dawned with such a cloud

and swept Cordes Drive into Manhattan Bay.

it's very simple

give every man woman and child

enough food to eat.

give them a house to live in.

give them a cat and a dog to care for.

give them whiskey and beer

and cigarettes and ibuprofin.

give them access to the internet.

give them cameras.

give them books.

give them books.

give them Christmas trees

or menorahs or sinter Klaus.

give them freedom

which may be a remote control

or a walk down the street.

give them sidewalks.

to accomplish this

take from the rich.

take and take and take

until everyone is buying each other drinks.

the quiet of 11 PM

when each

of my housemates

are alone in their rooms

or they are with a girl

every creak

of the floorboards

is audible

each

scuttling roach

a tiny six legged button

this is when

I think about Time