Melancholera

I.
So many days look like
pale reflections of death,
suppurating hours
spent behind smoked glass.

(Variations on a theme.)


II.
Was a home,
once, "our little
den of sin," we said,
and I miss you on
the balcony
waving me away to work.
God, but you loved
my sorry ass.


III.
The infectious
melancholy
of
moments.

Half-forgotten memories of a merry
face half-obscured by sheets
blown in the wind,
all
half-remembered
over a cup
of coffee,
shared across a table;
endless overlook of
separations which echo
up and down
hollow bones.

IV.
Birdboned
and
Flightless.

When I got there,
all my hopes
clutched to my chest
in neat little
bundles,
she was waiting with
arms spread
so wide.

I could have circled
the earth on her wings.


V.
Useless affectations of
affection effected all
my affluent ardor.

I liked to fuck her,
but I didn't love her.
She always knew.
I knew.


VI.
On these pale
days,
peering back with
the bones of old
memories tack-
tacking against
each other
to the tune of,
"should've been,"
it's easy to overlook
the disguising
inconsistency of
falsely uncertain
understanding.


VII.
We never admit
that we really
understand
the things we look
away from.


VIII.
People are puzzles
glimpsed too close -
distance-lent perspective
plays neat little
jokes on memory.

In the hole,
any grass is
greener grass.

IX.
Dust of years,
dust of ages
undisturbed
by forgotten sages -
(How I make memory
into a museum!)
What curious curator
catalogues the curios
I keep locked up 'side
cabinets in my mind?

He is a hobbled crone of
a stickfigure. This man
has bruised veins,
all liver-spotted palsy,
ugly effectiveness.


X.
Strange writings in the dirt of
mind, these lost languages of
past connection. There are
people whose words I once
could have foretold, who
speak now with tongues
I feel I never knew. All ties
have fallen to drift and decay.
What fool, I, trusting my heart
to frayed ropes.

The center cannot hold.