at | Golden Star Poetry

as i safeguarded you
i knew there would always be a tomorrow when,
lazily draped over the sun
there you would always be,
your face.

you tumbled onto a grassy shelter of concrete
your edifice
sanctuaried here, on this
lone bus stop.

i’d mourn,
but no one has been laid down
no one is dead.

if it had all been real, though
i’d mourn the thought of being squashed down
being lost somewhere in the middle;
i’d murmur in the moment i had touched the
solid gold year, the ripe fruit of the fresh year
the orange-blossom-laden year
palm to heart, pressing like a dart
pressing my torso,
rocking:

mourning for a dead moment
i stood by the stoop
mourning for the still moment
short minutes long,
that i held the crisp autumn air of ripe truth
when i held your water eyes in mine-
when i had looked into my calm, opiate future
in your pooling eyes:

i saw the book-filled apartments and the
late nights and the
long trips and the
aching shade and the
long walks down the city streets,
talking or laughing of nothing at all–
but you needn’t look to find me now,
all i ever do now is mourn.

well,
mostly it was myself under the
7/11 gas station street curbs wishing for
cultivated gentlemen types to
tap their canes against their top hats and
nod at me politely,
because they all had a poet stuck inside them
that i could always see
like paper thin bones sticking out beautifully.

i noticed how easily i could replace a person in my mind
simply by leaving them behind me
every new eye was a sigh of tangible relief
an unsure, changeable reality:

just turning around, i was housed in the irises i clung to,
and it was like balancing, scary
to make the world spin around, dazed and reeling,

i was struck dumb with each passing face
each never-seen-again poet laureate with his
words and his
speechless touching,
and his eyes
hiding under ten layers of coal and ash,
or beneath the swift transit of railway trains
or tucked inside the misinformed chit chat that graces the lips:

i met u one day
on the tram
as we flew past the streets
at an alarming rate:

too fast, too soon
how quick i could fall in

how i could nestle into u
as i met u

we could float out from the tram window
into the air
where the quiet from your eyes
met the quiet of it there:

(i was never looked at
like that before,
and the stillness was a new kind of stillness:
deliberate)

your holy eyes were a replacement
as i thought they would be

but what could i achieve
by just leaving u alone,

without me?