I prefer to be the stranger
It’s easier to explain away my eccentricities as rudeness, stranger
to fact all the fictions and gossips as possible
yes, I am sick
Yes, I am impossible
In the macro view
In the microverse
Where everything is me
And everything is you
I’m in love
I’m in love
I’m in love
A coal in the center of my being
Maddens me
Into speaking
A fiery hound loping ’round and around
my maelstromed heart
Yet
within my whirl
Your eye so calm
I whisper gold frames around
a peach sunrise
-But superimposed
your shaded smile-
in chocolate and mint-
I can’t resist-
I eat my words
Concentrating on your lips
How do you do
Tinny through the submarine smile
I answer
In morse code
Taps of teeth and sound
Whole sentences form
I’m drowning
Downstairs
Pretending I am well
Because you will only have me
Well
But she reads it as
Fine, I’m fine
Heaven, bear me up
Head dragging on the floor
Mad as great great greats in Stockton
Mad as starting again
Thick with worry and spite
I stand again
Unreformed, but moved