You Might Be

          You know,
you might be
the best person
in the universe,
with your deftly
planted hat; determined,
almost-smile; the tiny,
ticky voice that mocks
the splendour of the face.
With your tropic melodies
imported from some dead
lagoon, that easel you
embarrass with disjointed
strokes, the pungent nightly
products of your kitchen
hours, you might be the
heroine that Woody Allen
couldn’t quite create
(if Woody’s name is
mentionable this week).
          You see,
for these, and more,
you might just be
the best person
in the universe.
But, also, you might not.

Tokyo Gardens

In the Tokyo gardens where we will never meet,
I tell you that I think you’re strange
and unspectacular to see, and that you
speak too much (even though you say you don’t).
Emboldened by the scents I’ll never smell,
I dominate the hours with words. I tell
you everything about yourself, and me,
talking more than either of us think I can.
Inspired by petals that I’ll never see,
I lay my truth: that—despite it all—there’s
no one I’d prefer to view, or hear repeating
stories for the fifteenth time; no one else
alive I’d trust with all the details of my life.
The one, or none, in whom I’m willing to confide.

Tokyo’s no distance any more (and
luckily you take outsiders now!).
But I began my journey early,
and that is why I won’t arrive.

Dark Women in Dark Rooms

          Is it any more than this?
Not the sometime thoughts of eminence,
proficiency, or lately just production;
the execution of (removed) familial love;
or—laugh of all—pretence to occupation.
Three columns these to hold a worthy life!
          No, is it not reducible to this:
dark women in dark rooms;
a life known truly in pursuit,
the doing and the dreaming interfused.
More than that would leave
the unshocked shocked.