Song for A. #2

The soul must be some kind of annex, 

some depository filled with thready 

spines: books embalmed by dull inken

names, familiar but unread. Or of wires

and circuits and boxes, flashing lights, 

sounds of communication and information. 

All vague; all unspecific. Or simply of things 

repossessed, taken from debtors 

and the dead, left to be claimed or bid upon, 

or tossed out after a certain duration. 

Which is to say I don’t know what moves

me most days. Rarely do I see the path 

between action and command.

Incredulous, I get to burdening myself; 

I get to organizing, to ordering, to tabulating 

what is mine and where I left it. 

I get to taking things out of my warehouse 

and tossing them, breaking them over my knee

like a child in a miniature gi, screaming, 

shouting, celebrating, on the verge of an orange belt.

I have seen friends near death, though none 

of them have made it all the way––none 

that I have seen anyway; a few have done so 

without my watching. When you awoke you were 

annoyed: you scanned the room of paramedics, 

of police, of me, and before you answered any 

you said you had to piss. Your shirt was ripped: 

they had cut it down the middle with jagged, 

metal scissors, forgoing the time and care 

of unbuttoning. This annoyed you too. 

You exhaled loudly, like a teenager, 

like a quiet bull, dead-eyed, pinned behind shit-

stained metal bars, a rodeo awaiting bucking, 

and stormed off to the bathroom. 

I don’t know about heaven (you said 

it was just black and blank) but I dream 

of the west a lot. Some blue-skyed, cloudless 

place, free range, where the infinity of my skull 

and your skull might still be, but quelled or calmed by heat, 

it’ll just be a bit nicer. A bit nicer wouldn’t be bad. 

A bit nicer is all you can ask for. 

This poem was originally published in City Fishes Magazine, Issue no. 2, “Fuck Eric Adams Edition”