strange night

we met in the gilt shadows of chandeliers and potted ficus. we fit into the cracks together. while everyone else drank clear liquors, we spoke of Chatterley and broke off into a night young and ripe like our expectations. we ran through the wide streets of Columbus Circle, pointed at oil paintings on the tiny screen you carried in your pocket. upstairs, while I waited for the pressure to release from the secret place you hid too easily, right on your shirtsleeve, we pretended to love. but we were strangers. strange night.

Hunting

Seed, spew, spill,
seminal
gradual
intercontinental drifting with the dharma bums.

Last night I started reading the book my grandfather wrote, a novella-length project titled Under the Horror of the Swastika and of the Red Star: Recollections of War and Post-War Times in the Polish Resistance Movement.

The war broke out mere weeks after the completion of his Master's in Law. He was a barely a man. What civility, what reason was there to study?

(I found his book by Googling; no idea he'd written a piece that, it turns out, answers the questions my father cannot. I purchased it from Amazon, a river of ones and zeros that, when coaxed with precision, led to his own hand at my doorstep (the inscription of the book made out to some long long student lives and light years in the future and now past).)

Relic

of someone else's youth

humming

with bated breathe, I'd ask you.   has it been long enough.   for us to embrace without the static electricity that at one time burned with the intensity of the sun and melted the wings of youth?

to the unnamed man who, without knowing the meaning of his own words, stole my breath six years too early

God, do you remember when I asked if I was 
b u l l e t p r o o f ?


Love, you should have asked if you needed me.

and so we said,
while staring in the mirror,

you & I,

grass on a porcupine.