dharna*
(won 2^nd at PoetsLeague 1999)

i cannot bear your
random acts of kindness
anymore.
i am empty like swiss cheese
where i have given you parts of me
to make into a mobile.

our dharma dramas,
spiders spinning silk stalkings,
have rarefacted all reality:
that rush/lull/rush
when you are here but not here but here.
my dialectic of need
for you,
dancing
like needles of desire,
makes my skin crawl.

do my tin-can feet
ricochet too noisily for you?
am i a joke, a virus,
to proliferentiate,
to mutate, in
your otherwise european world?
i admit that i am
a low-bottom fisherman
in this sea of extremes.
i am not rational,
rational comes out in little pieces.
yet
my castle is of rare earths:
my thoughts are gadolinium,
my wishes chrome.

am i jealous?
i am jealous of the air
that touches you
when i cannot.

we are linked by the hooks
we lay into ourselves--
charmed sundancers in the lodge
fey folks on the spokes
picked up and broken
on the wheels of oldsmobiles.

listen to me,
just because you have no boundaries
doesn't make you boundless.
vietnam dreams are easier on me
than this infatuation.
the smell of you on my robes,
long after i have worshipped at your altar,
is like rotting lilies in a crypt.
i wall myself up with words
to prevent your corpse from visiting
me too often.

the crucifix you handed me
has long since burned out.
the love oil has turned to grease
and stuck to the roof of my heart.
i don't know whether i want you back
or want you dead.
(do you have a preference?)

a squirrel on the highway to fresno,
i was transfixed in your headlights.
falling was the easy part;
the bouncing is what sets my flesh on fire.
i am cheap and
i am easy and
i am not easy to live with.
then, again, you never tried--
you lived without
i wish i could do the same.
i kept your hair in a locket
(it is not you.)

this is the end of our lives
together but apart.
like my tongue stuck to a frozen pipe,
i pry myself free
from my addiction for you.
let someone else shoot you into their veins
for awhile;
my veins are as dry as the moon.
the magic i work
is guaranteed not to rust.
the magic i work
conjures my intent.
the magic i work
conjures only memories
and i bid your memories be gone!



* dharna--a fast held at a doorstep of an
offender in India as an appeal for justice;
literally "support"