Let me tell you a secret:
When I’m old with a mouth
like a gravestone party(all tilted teeth
and mossy gums)I’ll still know your face better
than hands know
a house-key in the dark.
That face — something to carry in the palm, talismanic-smooth.A key*
to unlock and relight a home
room by room,
entered and made warm
from footsteps and good thoughts alone.
*A key has many parts to love your fingers
over. A moon-round head. A blade running
to the tip that nuzzles the skin of your thumb.
A plain of notches and teeth that feel like
nibbled kisses beneath that round head,
that marvelous unlocker. That opener
of doors.
Encore: Ten definitions of nostalgia
To be lost in loss
and like it.
To construct a dollhouse youth
and call it a golden age.
Calling up each passing second, and with static
on your tongue, calling it an anniversary.
A feeling-delivery system that comes
in just one flavor.*
Silvery fish, a-gasp and slippysoft, pulled up from below.
Now thrashing in a boat (and you too scared to kill them).
A modern-day magic turning you into Houdini.
Slipping the rope of now.
Sheer stubbornness: the past refusing
to dilute.
Old shows, old photos. Shadows made to make
you feel younger.
That Grecian myth where the hero can get all he wants most,
as long as he doesn’t look back.
He looks back.
A most visited vice, a sin
that taps your shoulder and says: look back. Be lost in loss
and like it.
*Salty-sweet. A little sickly. Licked off of your fingers. Read that again. See if the feeling lingers.
Fire/light after the riot
Bonfire flames fuel double-decker fun / eating cars like snacks, crunching glass and / fire-light kissing tarmac into wax / beautiful in a way but the night is thin- / skinned alive, we're all / just / hanging / by a thread. You / know we are. So don't waste /
a single matchstick moment.
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