Engage,

delay.

Distance molehills of mountains make,
blind as bridesmaids.

I stand a planet’s shadow.
Once I lifted my hand in a room
to block the light coming in from the window,
to look at the way it made you.

It goes with us when we go. Once
I lifted my hand in a room to
block the light coming in
from the window,
look at the way it made you.

All the furniture was pushed to the front of the room, like a photograph at a strange focus. This was the apartment just south of the launch-pad, where he could watch shuttles take off. A fly figure-skated it loops just above the surface of the white walls, and the slow light of evening
coloured the room with a kaleidoscopic brilliance, making strange shapes as it caught in the drapes doily design. A dog-lazy radio leisurely scanned. The ceiling fan turned slow circles, the clock ticked, a bulb buzzed, and the fly executed its figures, un-interpretable as crop circles or the similar shapes left on surfaces by coffee mugs.

Now at our last meal together,
saucers sing through our place.
You say if you go, don’t come back.
I’ll let you lick the plate.

You say if I leave go in full view,
with a tin can clenched in your hand.
But don’t you have your ways?
You will pay for your holidays.

This afternoon I woke in crested sweats,
and wanted to put a fishbowl on my head.
A rocket ship magnet pinned a note to the fridge,
the fridge an empty sabot shouldering the freezer’s shuttle,
an old grocery list, commitments are like
rocket ships, I think, then read the newer note,

“your mind is a place where everything swims,
and I hope you don’t forget that I’m leaving.”

All my days in the sun have come back singing.

Shadows eat the moon. Your urgency made numb.

I don’t know what item of frozen food I’ve forgotten,

but I wrote you a new note, in fire, on the front lawn.

Everything you said had such gravity,
as if it could hold, and hold fast,
like “opposites attract,” you attracted me,
but in square rooms our love grew oblong.
So I’ll wander wherever streetlights
make constellations, thinking of you,
for I am a lost astronaut,
and Houston, we have a problem.

My wall’s a blank sheet all day.
At night it goes black as a bomb.
The world turns on us always.
Which side are you on?

You’ll watch the rockets as they take off.
I’m strapped to an argument.
You count it down on a digital,
T minus 2, 1...

Only 24 but the lord’s got it out for me.
Paint spilled on the floor in my bachelor, I’ll still say it’s you.
It speckles the drop sheet, so
I clean it up, I spend my days doing nothing, watching TV.
You’ll always fulfill what you perform.
Pick up, pick the damn thing up, yes the phone.
Paint a Jupiter spot like Gorbachev’s
head. How could I refuse? I’ll tell you what. All
the ways that you loved me were all
the ways that you held me down.
Now I’ll paint holes in my house,
look down to the badminton courts.

The key: I put my arm round the back of your chair and you put your hand on my knee on the meat of my thigh I look forward to spring hearing the cordial moans of the un-satisfied.