At last, Grandpa’s least favorite; at best

my best friend’s eighth best friend. Now myriad 

impossible ways to be loved suggest

like ways to be impossibly hated.

I can’t be replaced if I don’t admit

you’re gone. Somewhere between am too concerned

and don't give a shit, this dogeared friendship

ran away from home (and never returned).

We hadn't spoken in so long, I think 

we stopped knowing each other. It reminds

me of the favorite shirt that I don't 

wear anymore, to keep a teensy tear

a teensy tear, and of Grandpa’s cufflinks,

I was afraid I'd lose so hid somewhere.

Let me say aloud what's best left unsaid. 

One sentence to destroy you (and leave me

better off dead...) else prove myself insane. 

Or not. Toughness doesn’t come from taking 

one's coffee black. No, that raised rash begins

within, surfaces in stock reaction

like the rainy day wiggle-worm. Beastly,

yes, but beasts wrong sinlessly. The green glass 

battle, just a dream; arguing how tall

is a leprechaun with a leprechaun, 

and waking to new blood stains. Vagary’s 

weak currency and only a “did you

get my text?” text bought me time to contain

the outburst – I’M SORRY I YELLED AT YOU!!!

“I've never been in a kayak,” I said

before I (drunk) got in one and pushed off

behind my brother-in-law, Matt, paddled 

in the dark to the riderless jet ski

drifting out in the middle of the lake,

prepared to find someone floating near it, 

facedown, or blood on the seat or, at least,

keys still hanging from the ignition but,

years later, I recalled that, years before, 

I already had been in a kayak

on my bicycle trip, in Idaho...

Anyhow, there was no body or blood;

most likely the jet ski wasn't tied up 

and had just drifted away from its dock.

Around the boulder I spied the day’s bare

conclusion, pink; stepped right in a tide pool

and threw my hands to the slippy granite

hoping to find yours among the many.

Screw falling down; unite raincoat plastered 

with red leaves. It's a new way to be fine:

Trees will lean down later to pat our hair.

Peaches yolk yellow flushed with giddy wine

looked good enough to eat, were all bone-hard. 

We picked just to have picked, earn an opal

of work sweat and kick back in the Airstream.

“I made you a refreshing drink,” Penny 

hands me a glass and says. “Guess what's in it... 

orange juice, milk, and vanilla ice cream.”

Lost in time only steps from his home, doomed 

to wait forever, first in friendless line

for that hot lunch, free CD; only these

small round Band-Aids to help him feel alone 

through the dry-eyed dream of return. Rightly,

the connective tissue of collective 

concern and hand-me-down fraternity 

curled up like blueprints; smiles in service

of propped bonds reached imaginary heights

and relaxed into grimaces nightly. 

Doomed. In the shade of a kitchen table 

littered with bills he makes wishes on a 

round-tipped star, when he’s drunk enough to care

or there's no such thing as a time machine.

The bead necklace lay coiled in its box,

wasted gift, while the cutting board softened.

It was a sort of sport, no? The way we

volleyed optimism? Shucks. In the end

we shared our meals unwilling when in lieu

of ambulant wishes, empty dishes 

might have been more filling. Take back your key;

save me, I cling as lichen to these rocks.

What will it take to lid this belching stew?

Daunting familiarity; to’ve met

before we’ve ever met and to carry

my name like the tied stem of a cherry.

No more watch the red sun’s broad amulet

deck low fruit I’d striven for from ditches.

I writhed behind tableaux of tangential 

friends I'd abruptly never see again

now the vector’d been withdrawn. Sequential 

loose ends, swallowed links of the anchor’s chain,

strobed shade beneath the helicopter’s fan.

   I tried not to feel so devastated,

   burrowed into specious bliss but, oddly,

   I was thriving in unexpected ways:

   Notions of kinship badly outdated 

   were let to recede downstream and replaced

   as Expectation, that ghoulish con-man,

   coughed out his lungs like a foreign body

   and drowned in a crock of horseshit as wide 

   as the ocean, a noble suicide.

"No matter where you are," I wrote, "you sit

brightly imposed on the indefinite

nebular storm of my vast inner-lid."

Love was once a wish to close a distance

between opposite corners of a dance

party: Bathroom light, face in brief bloom,

I'd stared a dotted line across the room;

a look like love-letter, its poignance tied

to distance (you lose the thrill supplied by

teeter-totters when sitting side-by-side).

Burned, sure; but does heat or closeness bear blame?

Consider the campfire that holds your eye:

Wall to canyon wall, valleys night undid

might be redone by distancing from flame.

Guilty solicitousness, an appeal

to the feelings plied by popular song, 

born of her/your dejection sighting me

as she/you stepped outside with that old man,

her/your head bowed, had jiggered a sort of

chivalrous autopilot, whereas my

actual feelings had been staring me 

in the face all along. Let me, at least,

explain: It was her at the party but 

it was you too; excuse my confusion

(background music for a grumbled rebuff). 

Telling you/her I loved her/you, bordered

on abuse but, then again, she/you was/

were you/her and I was never myself.

We can have – could've had – a good life here,

a great life; children, best behaved, sharing

that gleeful conspiracy they'll never

outgrow but which we presciently forgave.

It’s sad to go. Sad to stay. Sad to stop

wanting those things we can't have anymore,

remiss on icy parquet... The creaking

waits in all directions; must we ball fists

and call it compromise? (Less forgotten

than never quite retained, while amassed like 

sea glass from a remote shoal we’ll never

find again, much less stroll) surprise birthdays

   extend the cold tip of a pizza slice

   when there’s nothing left to complain about.

These ghosts were beautiful people once, now

they’re fairly counted sheep; not even real. 

The long curated favorites fade. Instead,

a wounded sense of suffrage, buzzing fear,

and grand demands are all that are relayed

when spiting me you turn your head their way.

How many weeks post gifting should I ask

them what you really wanted? How long gone,

that perfectly good doll, till it became

clear – it was the ghosts were truly haunted?

A scream, near enough to startle the rich 

nobodies who'll next live here, urges we

sound those same ad hoc détentes, regarded

by that same old, red-eyed, digital clock.

   What did we, gone to seed, do to sour 

   those dozen bad apples set to spoil 

   the whole bunch, rank fruits without stone that treat

   reproduction like consumption alone?

The sallow meats, bread flocked with sentient moss, 

ripe berries reek fleeced via impassioned 

imposture leave me the plain brown measure 

of my loss: Whole potlucks down the drain like

toothpaste caps or mindlessly knocked into 

the trash and swallowed by the garbage truck.

Crimped wants misfeed while these, my shriveled nuts,

monuments to all that a grown-up male

can willingly forget, are shooting weeds,

leveled once they exceed the walkway’s ruts.

So many answers to the one question,

diffuse tiny quarrels. Unlove. Was it 

ok to’ve learned to love (and take pop songs) 

from those I'd spurned? Passing phantoms on the 

road home of onetime partners wronged: I was 

prickly, yes, callous and petty (sorry)

and nearly cried for what I'd whispered once

but the wishful welling lessened, smushed in

by blocky fingers, transposed into a 

blunt depression. Fooled into believing

this unbearable fall was just a song

one couldn’t listen to except alone

that only meant something to someone else,

I wasn’t ever really cool at all.

“As easily as I once could peep-Tom

from sidewalks’ blind remove, inherited

despair had become, finally, too tall 

an impediment. Domestic ennui

pulled up its chair, pooled with fears of feeling 

precisely the wrong way, relit the need 

to say something when I’d nothing to say.” 

Now these vested dreamtimes: Plush crib-mates bend 

ears to dampen cheek and chin. This long night 

might be it, friend. As in a dream we meet 

on familiar ground; myself, buried

in your comic infidelities, and

you, probing for the earthworm’s other end’s

secret tunnel beneath this roused quicksand.

My brother, who would then descend metered

glass sheets (apparent once shattered in turn)

to core the ramped snow at the northern face

of the eastern abutment of the Church

Street bridge over the Naugatuck as a

meteor strikes the sheer face of the moon,

disputed clenched austerity during

the unsupervised span from 3 o'clock

school recess to 5 o'clock work recess;

was free, suddenly, of the blemished rail.

A surprising interval – aqueous,

achronal, quietly resonant – yet

he's gone quick as knob-strung baby tooth, and

secreted between pillow and mattress.