sleeper

Your sinoatrial node pops concentric circles a radar beacon a beckon and yes I understand science and how it doesnt work this way but I feel it every time crashing waves on my back and neck tingling my hands clicking at me like echolocation like I could find you in black caves and moonless nights and dark labyrinthine sheets with those imagined electromagnetic sonic nonsenses pinging off the strange receiver somewhere buried in my guts this diminutive little antenna receiving across one very strange very strong frequency I never knew about until you set all my hairs on end and began crushing me with those subwoofer tsunamis I still feel them wherever you are the come down from the sky up from the ground and whomp whomp whomp all across the topography of me. I could get crushed by you forever.

Dad useta get those little bundt cakes. It was up by naperville or glenview or bard or someshit but he got it in his head one time that you loved those cherry almond tea cakes which you did but still it was funny I dono even why he always headed that way what work he coulda been doing up there. You know one time he called me in the middle of the night and asked me to remember a name he just said hey bear uh just uh just remember this name okay just in case and I didnt remember the name at all I just said what what do you mean what do you mean remember this name and he said forget it Im sorry I shouldna I shouldna called and asked you Im sorry bear and hung up and I just felt so guilty about it and bewildered and just what the fuck about it. Anyway for some reason I always put the geography of that name and that phone call up by those cherry almond cakes like he brought em back from after whatever shady business that was. They were real good though. Always perfect soft and wet amaretto sweet not quite marzipan rich. Its what I think dirt tastes like to giants or ogres or golems whatever mythical thing eats big clods of soil and rock wet from the earth. I dono if thats a thing but it must be. Its the sorta monster he woulda put in the stories he made up for us way back when those bedtime stories hed riff about the purple planet and stuff some dirt eating monster woulda fit in. Anywhoozle. Good cakes. Loved those fuckin things.

You may say goodnight but not goodbye.

Not out here. Not out west.

Because there are still coyotes hustling across lamp lit boulevards.

Because the night still smells of tomorrows sweet bread tonights cold starshine the bay and eucalyptus tumble of perfumed forever.

Because not you nor I nor any poor soul has seen the morning which does not break like runny eggs for the searcher.

Sleep that old sonofabitch traitor. Drawin me in all warm blanket and hand at the elbow hand gently rubbing my upper back circles of shhh and its okay and its cold out there huh and let me sing to you and let me tell you a story let me show you your wildest dreams quite and set you off on adventures in everlands of its okay and far enough from here to forget and then four before the meridian rolls around and the sharp intake of making air breath making breath gasp and maybe this night making gasp sigh or whimper because you sonofabitch traitor you sunuvabitch where did you go like a child whos lost his dog his protector and companion and playmate where did you go why did you go what did I do why I thought you were my friend cracking eyes and clenching throat and cold as it ever was where did you go. I thought you were my friend.

You were always great in fall. When the turning world keeps slipping round faster and faster a giant whetstone grinding itself sharper. Away the flowers go all the lush hot plumage and sweet heavy bottomed fruits hang to dropping. Ordered rows and disordered hands and mouths plucking dozens of too many apples that will rot anyway and so taking a single bite or two before tossing it into the grass with the trampled thousands. Cold eyes and warm bodies. Unknowable hearts. Bundled together with the world rotting to beautiful clean white skeleton.

There will be no pretending any more that I think my heart and soul and love and trees and trains ice cubes old glassware shades kitchens cafes couches and generally the whole drumming ticky tocky nonsense and wonder is at all the same thing I did and its because of you that I think there is more.

No thing has thrilled or frightened me such. Nothing has calmed me as much. Never the same panic and learned exhalation. Id be happier not having a thing at all than to know the thing I wound up with could never be this. That. Never was.

I will always love you. I wont bury it deep. I might let it out to expire in the atmosphere and heat and all cleansing sunlight but to bury this thing deep as I would do would have to would only lend chance for deeper and stronger roots. Roots which always grow and wind up reaching their way to the surface and sky beyond tendrils begging for life and time in the sun. Time to blossom. And to wither.

Im afraid there is no way to pretend I would not blossom and wither and die just for the hoping chance my flower and seed might be caught in your breezy sparkling gust and carried to a life ongoing all grace and cycle. Eternal as the earth from whence we spring. Glittering on the wind forever fragrant and buzzing and caught together in dance with the swirling devils of soil and the twirling drunken bees and at night the fiery pop flies and general bioluminescence.

I do not need to hear your thoughts to know their merit I do not need to hear your music to know its truth please love play the swell being of you into the caverns and canals of mine

wanting ears walk back and forth from my sights and sighs so that I might gaze while the edges of you splash watercolors on the marked pavements you dance 

O!
glaive of light gash me again with all the cut of your teeth glaring through and out of that strange grin cackling like the moon on its unlikely perch together chuckling with stab and sweetness at all my faltering once agile steps indeed
laugh
my
loves
you and moon alike as I fall and fall and fall
over myself tripping
again and again for even a brief moment of your glittering brook and carving gait the shape of you stamped again and again on any surrounding you have even briefly possessed following me onto all the ones I might call my own saying to me
no
Wolf there is no escaping me or the moon who you sing to nightly 

your worship has been heard across the ages and flown on silver carriage to the highest places 

so 

of course I have come sent by him to make you mad and wild lolling the tongue rolling the eye baying again and again at my door pawing the front step scratching the frame and biting the knob slavering with ears tucked eyes large and bright as him up there in his startling canopy him pouring guffaws
at me
and
with you
him
that hysterical pitted ol lantern.

Let these shining lenses flare apace without any of that old fury. Let there be comfort without any of that sadness but for some cutting nostalgia. Let it be one a those things where lungs open together only to breathe something cleaner and heavier and brighter than air. Still. As we are you slow the pace of my heart and steady unsqueeze the clutching vice of mine eyes and brow. Such relief that the mystery of what art thou say what thou art why I should yield to thee need never be exhausted and instead waves and hugs and small smiles live in its place. Shining eyes and noses forever far reaching to horizons we could never imagine. See you again dear. And always.

This is the first weve met.

Well. No.

But it is the first these vessels have passed in the night. The first I have heard that chuckle and felt it nest in me resting in that place carved out and down bedded. The first I have taken in the crook of your elbow and drank the brush of your hair. The first I have read the movement of jaw and purse of lip that plays everything out clear to me long before it reaches your lungs or feet or fists. The first we have known in the slightest and yet. Its all hello old friend.

And good to see you again.

And its almost as if youd never left in the first place.

What a wonder to meet you again. In these bones and eyelashes. To have your waves breathe around my atoll.

I never wept enough for you and I will be sorry for it always.