Whatever you feel:

long twinges of fear
upon rising; terror
of a full mailbox; 
happiness before sleep
if only fleeting;

whatever you feel,
I hold myself open
for you in that feeling.

Bring me pain or pleasure
and I will carry it with you.
Bring me ecstasy or final 
despair upon grief’s arrival,
or your own fear of death
collapsing into acceptance,
I will shiver and then embrace
it, and you with it;

for I know the poverty 
of loneliness and how it ravages
one’s capacity to be present;
how it drives you from past to future
with no time to stop for now. I know

where you are when you stop 
and cower, for I have been there myself;
I know the neighborhood of contentment
even if your address is adjacent to mine,
or a street away or more.

Whatever the walk demands of us,
we will walk it. Whatever the talk
gives us to speak, we will say it.

Whatever you end up being,
I will stand there and see you as you are;

and whether you walk on without me
or I without you, that there was a shared path
once, I will never deny. I will never
allow myself the luxury of edited past
and altered future without acknowledging
that you and I once shared the present
and all it held, we carried it together,
and it led us to today.

Obligatory knife, billfold,
pack of smokes;

pen, notebook,
lighter, and phone

tucked into various
pockets and bags

which also hold 
all my dead friends 

from long ago 
right up to yesterday.

To pull one
mundane tool

or item forth
is to drag with it

smiling old ghosts
covered in lint.

After lighting a cigarette
or peeling an apple, I nod

to Eddie or Joey
or Kelly or Terry

or whoever else it is and
put them away along with

my everyday carry — the things
I need to get though the day;

all of them, knowledge and fire and edge
and wealth and Death and 

of course, the means to my art;
all of them with me every day,

smiling in my pockets, waiting
for my need. 

You woke up this morning
perched on a blister. Don’t protest:
you know it’s true. Hear me out:

you know it could burst
at any minute; you know
the fall into the leavings

will be dangerous, and 
you’ll be soaked with whatever
is in there. You understand 

the word “befouled”
as something more than
prediction, something less than

promise. You see you are both alone
and not alone at the same time:
those who fall when it tears open

may fall together or apart
and safe landing
with those who love you

is not guaranteed. Safe landing
is not guaranteed in any case,
and then there’s the matter

of the blister itself — whose hand
is it on, and will they choose to clench it
upon us all when it breaks?

All you have now is the sight of sky above,
the scent of the earth, the sound
of beloved voices, the taste of memory,

the touch of future. When it bursts
you will have the relief of 
the end of fear. When you land,

what you will have left of yourself
is unknown. You have this morning
now. That’s all any of us have now.

I don’t feel 
like buying a calendar
this year — demarcation
of the future feels like
a farce —

the days will surely
heat up and fall
into a progression
of same upon horrible same —

If there is to be hope 
in the coming year
I don’t want to pin it on
a date — instead I shall plant
a garden

and mark time by shoot
leading to seedling 
leading to bud and bloom and 
fruit or thick-enough root —

and if there is meal enough for me
at the end

I shall count it
as my small hope fulfilled
and if I can feed another

I will say I have exceeded my hope

even as the rest burns

for it is already burning
and what we mean 
when we say hope
is singed and buried in ash
so deep
we would not know it
if it emerged and came to us

and how will we cross
the date from the calendar
if we cannot know 
the day has come 

or even if
it has already come and gone

People with 
full face beards and
hollow cheeks; people

of glitter and loud 
music, of difference and
fragrance unlike yours, people

who seem to represent
luxury overlaid
on poverty —

you are not certain of how
to label them: male, female, 
rich, poor? They are certainly

people: grim people,
angry people, or maybe
simply worried people —

see the way their eyes
move above their beards.
See them flick back and forth

from you, to their neighbors, 
back to you, wondering
what you are thinking,

looking for safety among those 
like them. It has been
a hard world, after all,

and full beards cannot hide
hollow cheeks, or fear,
forever. You are

not certain of how
to label them?
Do not. It is

one small thing
you can do
in a vicious world.

Hands, fantastic
element I adore;
touch, medicine
against my eternal
submergence;

skin upon skin, preservation
I cannot offer to myself,
though salvation lies beyond
that moment of submission
to perfection; 

eyes, beloved
altars; sound
of conjoined breathing
rising and slowing,
a chant in the cathedral.

I long for such divinity
as if I would be lost forever
without it. I lose myself
for it, find myself beyond it:
here I am. Thus, I am.