a hagiography

i knew him for a time.
we flew around
the room of the world
like crazed moths,
bumping into one another
more often than not,
knocking loose the dust
from our wings

i heard he changed his name –
funny, i did too. we made
pentimentos of ourselves,
scrawled over the names
we once called one another
with ink & with wax.

we were wildeyed,
two jongleurs of
an old &
sour tradition,
ghoulish and gabbling
under the scold
of the moon,
ghastly and garish
under the scald
of the sun -

we unravelled ourselves
then gleefully set to the strings
with our teeth,
sawing giddily
back and forth,
magnesium sparking
exothermically
in our bellies

then suddenly
i knew him differently,
like a book from childhood -
he acquired a dingy patina,
became covered in
something sticky
like spilled jelly -

i came to know how
he acquired clothing:
by osmosis -
something borrowed became
something his
just because of how he wore it.
that,
and the stink.

i came to hate hearing him play
“her majesty” on the guitar,
especially the whole
bellyful of wine bit,
came to loathe
both his wistfulness
& his ardor,
latenights,
by the bungalows, crooning,
while girls, swooning,
clutched at his threadbare sleeves

how the ragged fall apart!
years down the line
i think of him,
somewhere west,
past the heaving, sighing Rockies,
past the arid and
steaming deserts -
i think of him,
sitting high up in a redwood
amongst whispering,
adulatory leaves,
in a familiar jacket
pressing a looking-glass to his eye,
facing east -

i am not so high as you;
i am nestled snugly
in my harbour-town,
an island amongst islands,
one for every day of the year -
& i have always preferred
the hard sheen of the Atlantic
and you,
you’ve always preferred
to be pacific -

once,
i broke the string of your guitar
on purpose, and never told you,
viciously turned the knob
as easy as turning a key
in a greased lock –

i blamed it on the humidity -
these things happen, i said coyly,
when they’re pulled too taut –
they capitulate,
sing one desperate chord
and then

twang

like the zithering lash
of a downed power line.

my fingers thrilled
to the snap, yanked away
as though burned,
itched -
for days after.

i can still hear it,
that sound –
can still see your manic,
berserker eyes
over your manic,
berserker beard,

i can still hear you
galumphing through your
frustrated coitus,
grunting and moaning,
slapping and sighing,
as though wresting madly
at the lock on the door
where love is kept captive
secreted away
in a dark corner,
shying away from your
red-faced advances -

we battered at the world,
ran full-hearted at doom
heedless of warnings
and admonitions
from those who had run
the same path before,
grinding our teeth
while congratulating ourselves
on outwitting the slow men,
the low men,
the causers of this and that and thus,
removed ourselves,
turned frail and brittle,
cracked
in more than one place –

for me,
the thunder of our separation
still reverberates
through time’s
glassy echo chamber,
like an orchestra halted
at the point of climax,

for you,
it’s no more
than a whisper,
the susurrus of drug
still feathering
your heart,

no more than
a moth’s wing
against your face
in the dark,

no more than
the schuss of cars
going through puddles
in the night,
somewhere between
departure
& return