The Inaudible Sound of Your Lover’s Anxiety
i.
Our bed has a man in it
He sighs deeply stretching his hand and pulls
The metal beaded string on the yellowing light outside the window
Again it is morning,
And we have lain all night
Talking
Mouths dry
I’ve borrowed pistols to protect
You from my feelings
Some of whom I have let loose
According to the protocols of the present study
Trembling
Like the gasoline shimmers
Of a desert’s journey on camel back
To a village where our liaison is hopefully waiting with supplies
At least that was the thought that kept us going the last time we were here
ii.
The piano
In my house
Is dusty
And full of mice
They play nocturnes
Each
To their own
String
Tails lifted in the mark of a question—
Hanging
When I say something
Microscopic and stupid
I want to kiss your hands and say something imponderable
About
The way your lips pursed remind me of the roses
In the Russian garden
I used to visit
Before moving to this city of salt and religion
Much of it is transparent
And yet
Defies all the attempts of my words
That dance insouciantly,
As if they weren’t the potential assassins
Of everything I’ve tried to tell you
Between the few inches
Separating our heads
On the pillow
Trembling with anticipation I can no longer define
Or even pretend
That we are not the fragile coincidence
I have tried to document in my fieldnotes
iii.
How little I know of you
Yet know somehow anyway
Trying
To reach consilience
With my many selves
The numerous feelings depicted
In the spandrels of my imagination
Like the mysterious music you hear in a dream
Of a forest growing
At the bottom of an ocean on some planet with iridescent
Undulating creatures that rumor has it
Live on the vibrations the planet emits
From its trembling core
And how is it possible
That you will sign the consent form
Even for a brief experiment
When half my selves are like the soviet scientists
Weary of the commissars
Bent on winning wars
Produced by paranoid models and questionable equations
I submit to you this document
Knowing full well that just last year one of my feelings
Kidnapped and interrogated the daughter of José Mujica, the president of Uruguay
And to think
They had
Studied the rare insects together
In the caves of Terra del Fuego
iv.
I am 10 and 19 and 12 and 20 and 33 and 37 and 148
The majority of my names have died
Philosophically speaking
Many have been outlawed in 14 of the lower 48
And 7 are currently in the custody of the Chinese secret service
But here
Look at this one
Celebrated in the annals of the best journals
Depicted prominently on the facades of several leading university libraries
Another was the inspiration for two plays and a musical
In which over a hundred Icelandic school girls sing individual arias
To the accompaniment of a full orchestra
Of ancient Greek musicians
Who play while simultaneously reciting
Manifestos on the rivers of time
Which are paradoxically solipsistic and infinite
v.
There is water
Running in your bathroom
The plastic cup of water
You
Hand me
Makes me
Want to kiss you
And beg the planet for forgiveness
I wish I could give you the world and rid it of polyurethane
How can I be worthy of your love if I can’t even eliminate the petrochemicals
Or in the very least pay off my mother’s mortgage
Most of my feelings would have me inhumed if they knew I was writing this to you
But it is late and I trust the young man I have endowed to memorize this note
Will deliver it without being discovered
To say there is nothing left
To lose
Is always false
To say anything
Means you have
A great deal to lose
Not the least of which
Are the lips, tongue, and larynx
There are also all those things we do not have and yet are terrified of losing
Not the least of which is the love of a woman you barely know
And yet know, she is
Absolutely
The isomorphic valentine of your deepest desires
Intrepid spy
Come to you with invaluable information:
Beneath the ardent lovers hides
The moon pale churning of the tides
They have remained forever true
Like the fierce mother kangaroo
The tomato plants sway under the moon pale breeze
Inside the cracked hull of the swimming pool
My heart is a mushroom, my desire is a cat watching the moths through the window
In the dream
I proffer you a hand in friendly supplication
The other is holding the entomologist’s compound field microscope
The other is playing the piano
The other is holding a scalpel
The other is reflected in the mirror
In which I am your convert and scientist
Your lover and engineer
I have made my grant proposal
To study your body and watch myself reflected in your eyes
To be the horse of your Hittite
The banana of your baboon
The silence of your hermit
The crispy green leaf of your testudine
vi.
My fragile fakir
watching the ripple in the mirror
My fragile fakir
Sleeping in your bed
My fragile fakir
My pony is stamping in the birches
And I’ve just caught sight of the Pinta and a band of riders on the horizon
My fragile fakir
When you turn your head
I have yet to tell you of the most beautiful things
In my lives
Of the losses I can no longer remember
Disappeared along the shore
Face downward in the ferns
My body—the naked trunk full of fieldnotes and rare specimens
I mean to use for the corroboration of my theories
For instance, June 25, 2015 reads:
You are a hero trying to unhitch your parachute
And I do not want you to stumble over me
And fall in a last embrace
Eventually forgetting me
As I have forgotten all my loves
Their statues lying on their sides
Half buried in the blue-green grass
And covered in orange lichen
I cannot change history, any more than I can change the feelings
Which haunt me like wraiths from 19th century novels
There is a weary alchemist at my door
With a long history of not making gold
He says that with my patronage, he might succeed
In forging the perfect alloy
For that armor you spoke of
