BACHELOR

My life today is no different.
A flush of autumn, a whip of flame
against a green spray of tree,
hot and red, tells that story.

That my life has always been my own
can be seen in the way that plastic bag
clutches tattered to a chained fence,
makes a sharp panicked flap
as the wind bears down on it.

I walk alone, now, when an
October chill engulfs me and lifts
my body out of the subway steps,
bracing the exposed skin around
my wrists, my neck; my face is hot.

When I sit at a desk, in front of
a soft computer screen, cramming
time and money into my head-
ingredients I sift through, and mix,
and knead–I do it with a sureness
that is only told by the bodies of
those who have nowhere to be later,
accountable to no one; will it be a drink?
solo or with friends? or will it be to the gym?
and then home to eat? to watch? to rest?

So it is not you, when my stomach
grips a knot of agate, and my shoulders
clench like iron rods across my back,
and when my face hangs stoic, in thought,
as I sit on the train waiting for my stop,
and I take these steps not knowing
where they lead or why they are:
It is not you–
you boy, you man–
when you extend a finger and press
gently into that deepest bruise, and
around the flat-headed tip swells
a pool of dark fluid, like blood–
it isn’t you who causes that wound
to yield its store of pain to the night.

It is no one else. It is darkness.
I regret, it is all me.

The cold damp air will tell you that,
as it stiffens the sheets on my bed
and makes sleeping and waking
unbearable chores that will still be done.

The coffee I make in the morning
says as much, when I pour the warm
drink into a single mug and carry it
past my sleeping roommate’s bed
across cracking floorboards.

And my jacket will always make it clear,
when I pull it closed around my chest,
cell phone pressing my heart from the
inside pocket, plodding up some street:

That young man lives alone.

First Fall Morning

Cold sheets.
No person to hold.
No other body
to warm this bed.

Two Pig House

I moved us
from friends
to lovers
carried us
over threshold
into dark,
your dead
father’s home

We made bad love
good intentioned
out of straw that
burns too fast,
or blows down

Reaction of the soul to an evening walk in search of pornography

I contain no multitudes.
I am one body walking earth.
Everything is mine.
Everything affects me.
No part is at ease.

If there is one soul,
I am its shape.

All that I am not,
I see.
All that I am–
Oh, Pain!–
is hidden.

Empty Nest

Gimme all those cocks back;
the ones I’d taken in with charity,
given them home and fed them,
tucked them in at night and left
the bedroom door open just a crack.

Bring me those children whom
I devoted my youth to raising;
only to watch them, one by one,
run away to play in other backyards,
forgetting where they came.

When Will I

When will I stop blaming
my failed loves for failing?
I'll never share these days
with them again--good or bad.

That September my successes
were all composed in your apartment.
I walk by it now (some other
person's light on--you don't live there)
kicking lonesome goals up Greenwich.

Channeling

When I was younger channels
would go off the air at night.
Parents away, my sister and I
to watch ourselves, zipped two
sleeping bags together and locked
all doors. We'd watch TV until we
fell asleep listening to it.

Tonight you ran through my head
like the cable in my room--times
have changed--and you never
go off the air. Not after two years.
There is always something on.
As I surfed the streets (I'm still
a cruiser!) I tuned in...

Only reruns.

For An Easter Sunday

My niece is just another baby.
I must remember that.

I must remember that when I
scoop up an entire moment with
my hand and lay it in front
of my sister, and ask my sister
to weigh every word against
the wriggling baby in her arms.

My niece is another baby;
and I love her unfairly, yes,
with the whole world's weight.