There’s nothing in the world that loves you
more than the space you already take up.
There’s nothing in the world that won’t
forget you faster than you forgot
the last person that stepped out from your life.
When the cat reaches up
one needled paw to drag down a book
from your desk, then another,
that’s not love—that’s dominance.
When you reach up your hand and try to wheedle
someone else’s to hold it, that’s love
dominating you. There’s no word for loving more
than you should, just the feeling of excess,
as if your tongue burst in a rash of red sequins,
as if everyone can see your stutter in the air,
staccato love you, love you, and nothing in the world
standing in that space to receive it.

Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this gift given to us and what are we to do with it?
And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that it has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken. We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends.

‘If the girl had been worth having she’d have waited for you?’ No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody.

You give them designer bags, your time,
Lucky star origami, an A+ for the effort that is
cruelly unappreciated, late night phone calls,
a kiss that stops time, and watch
as they throw your heart away

You forget yourself
Between the bristles of a paintbrush
or the ink of a pilot pen,
black or blue with a chewed tip
writing notes on small notebooks

a page for each star that shines
with a different light
Because long ago you’ve understood
that even the ones that have dimmed or burned out
are still special enough to write poems about

Then there were sun-shaped bruises all over you,
Bringing light where it was too dark to see
And now that I’ve seen I can no more escape the reality
Of rain touching muddy sidewalks, of the unfairness of the world,
the professors saying one liners and fragments
That destroy us
Parents that beat us to a pulp
Friends that left us because they felt like it
the so called lovers that don’t really

love us with a love that burns the soul
Words like alarm clocks that snap us awake
from this everyday dreaming

And tonight I will forget myself with you
Offer you my thoughts on the best china
Give you my bones for your fireplace
and my skin like a blanket to keep you warm
tears for water, blood for wine
You who have suffered too much and too long
deserve so much more than this
But I have nothing else
useful to offer
but my poetry