metonymy4u

                        emily

because you didn’t know
i was alive i had to live
just this side of love,

dreaming of a time
when your river would end in flowers,
my cliff dissolved in rain.

all chances,
answered.

travesty,
defamed.

this side of things
always seemed so barren,
at times less than bright.

but i think the coin
that shines itself is a day,
to its own starry starry

night.

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at the end of the arc of pain
your joys remain.

they were waiting. all waiting.

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Contradiction of entropy was forever my poetic aim. To
extract distance from every sense, assurance from
every emotion and the last sign of contemplation which
when expressed might be complete. Since imbued
with the oblique track of sadness, trapped inside me for a
piece of time, I contradicted my limit, grew away from
the circle of life—thus much was enough. Emulate
I said, emulate, and be done. That’s where the love is.
Close the room, rip the peel from an orange, adjourn
the love tryst of mass and energy. My faith in the balance.
From there we burn our way back to earth. Enter
the atmosphere a hopeless curve against a tangent
of orbital tendencies, bounce once over the Atlantic,
and seek nothing but a breezy landing on a southwest evening,

slowly. Slowly.
Love forever grows more slowly than leaves.

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                                    itinerary
                                             1. a planned route or journey
                                             2. a travel document recording these

indifference delayed me a moment before we left.
you seemed to want something more. what then: a
a comfortable tale, a mission statement, my fears
in a stuff sack perhaps? would you pack them away

with the trail mix, the water purifier, the tent, the sleeping
bags and the spare dry socks?

to be examined every night before we turned out the moon and fell
asleep side by side as we’ve done these twenty years.

i remember the first time
i felt your back under my hand as we danced.
your breath on my neck as you held me.

like every thought you shared with me on our maiden date,
the promise you made me keep when the bill came
and i wanted to pay for our first dinner together.

the lantern like me that tried to catch you.

poets exercise their fingers with their poems and i think
you were a song you made me play so i should never forget how to love.

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i wanted more from our relationship than
just another piece of evidence. i wanted more than an excuse
for moodiness. i think you did too. but the child that smiled and ran
knew all our lies and not one truth worth telling anyone.
why is it do you think that instead of wasting time
in lonely spaces where everyone is talking all the time,
you have never found enough silence in which
to grow something someone will remember?

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tardy with words i realize
i could step off these hills
into nothing and still

not know your name

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twenty seekers lay prone in the meadow of your love
since last winter because words are a quest
for nothingness. we found them while making our way to the
spring cabin for a season of rest. turns out it burned the year
before. no one bothered to let us know. true, spanish explorers
would have seized the day. but we vanquished by storm
and memory, turned home. secure in a different knowledge. defeated
by a different blight.

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what is the light of the new moon
where might we go in its friendly presence?
possessing a more unified mind
sure of its object in concentration?

what is unresolved in your heart my love?
where do you want to go tonight.
it is your time—
i brought it home for you:

now i am too full to talk about anything.
to full to speak of anyone i met today.

i have decided to love because i am done with hate.

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true words are walls
we bounce off them to live.

and the world is touching us all the time just
as originally forests quietly watched our love making—
antidotes for fear.
the mind wishing success in all directions.

who am i to ring the bell of shame
as always rushing over to you like a supplicant
unsecured of my own intentions?

interrupted peace was my only hope.
the undisturbed.

and i like the word longing.
i long for the truth that wakes you up
by my side every morning, so that
we can share some summer light
and a cool breezy dusk

under the clouds of evening.

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when i see myself as conditioned
my way beomes silence
everything here
undeniable

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