After After

I have thought many times about what I shall do after I write this. But now is still before, and this is before, but having said such, it is also after. I have spent many months thinking about before, before before, when things were better. Except things were never better: I was only blinder, before I knew, before I knew that I didn't know, before I knew what I now know after. I spend equally as much time imaging after after. I had a dream: I have a dream about after, after I can see whole faces again, after black faces and brown faces aren't held after white faces, after my faces face each other and I face each of them after my before is after, when I am after my before. I wonder about the weight of holding hands, how light they felt before, though before before when holding his hand was like holding a mine somewhere beneath our feet, set there some time before, and maybe it would detonate after we set upon if if we didn't hold still. And after after, I wonder how heavy our hands will be, when I haven't held a hand in so long, not since before. I remember before when I ate better and ran often and lost thirty pounds. And I think often after before when I gained back forty and I wonder now what I'll wear after after when people see more than my upper torso, since my shoulders fit about as well in my shirts after as before even if the bottom seams ride up my stomach after I switched to only elastic waistbands before. There is too much before to be mindful of what was before before, and I know there is too little after after to be certain of what will still exist after what happened before and after what killed before kills even more even after who was here before is replaced with the person after him. I have spent too much time staring after after, ignoring before before, and I commit, I cannot linger, must admit there is no after after when what I am, where I am, when I am is neither before nor after but now, and now, after before but still before after, I have neither before nor after to look for.

“After After” is after a poem in Jameson Fitzpatrick’s book Mr. & called “The Genius of Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With,” which is itself after a paragraph in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. Even poems, not only poets, can have their own lineage.

Lingering on Twilight

We stayed up all night drinking and now you’re sleeping and I’ve got a cigarette smoking between my lips and through the spreading fingers of its blue smoke I see the first rays of sunlight as they trickle inside the seams of the curtain and fall across your body, buffered by the clothes you forgot to remove. I untied your shoes, pulling the laces until the loops unraveled, slipped them off and set them aside. I ran my hand along your leg, felt the muscles twitch, you danced too much tonight, didn’t take time to rest, now you feel it, and my hands rise and fall with your chest like catching the tide one small wave at a time before something stronger sweeps it aside.

I tap the ash away, watch a plume of smoke slither upward through the morning haze, and undress myself until I’m skin deep in silence split every few seconds by the soft hiss and sigh of your breath. I slide into you and over you, feel every part of my body begging for every part of yours, separated by fiber and slumber. Your hair smells like sandalwood and patchouli, the back of your neck tingles my chin as I rest my head on your shoulder, and my hand draped across your body rises and falls until dreams obscure the thin folds of cotton and fur between us.

Mishaps or Miracles

The other day he told me, “Darren,
I need your help, and forgiveness.”
So I rose from our bed nervous
for a moment I stopped breathing
as I slid between the rooms
of his apartment, to where he stood
inside the bathroom.

Sculpted Lightning

or, The Beautiful Sameness of Normalcy

Original photograph by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos via Wikipedia, “Lightning”

Not like vinegar touches the tongue
or the futile efforts to mow down cement
make the sidewalk bloom with daffodils and daisies
let the summer unfold in whispers and sideways glances
let the heat undulate above the asphalt
paths that lead us to park benches draped in shade
and supernovas launched from baseball fields

Escape Plans

An academy of insults
the strychnine of silence
harbor only false hope
in this place of desolation
standing idly at the line’s end
holding your boarding passes
and carry–on in one hand
and your lover in the other
what kind of comedy
is happily ever after
when you’ve grown tired
of telling him goodbye?