you can have the whole of me in this field:
i pressed my soul into its loins
and beads of sweat still glisten
on the body learning to tango
in the outpour of rain.
i will surrender only here
so take care not to move even a strand of hair
from beneath the tree where i will lay through my whole life,
as if dying prematurely,
for this is home and i forbid you.
a day will come when spring will open me enough
for sun to shine
into the roots of the old cambridge tree
and open up
the rest of me.
—————————————————————-
i’ve been writing this poem for a while now and it feels forever unfinished. maybe that’s just me, always a word out, a syllable in. and then i give up and start something else. at the end of the day, however, i always come back to this. and the oldest tree in cambridge.
Posted in excerpts
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there was a line in streetcar named desire that i remember. it said it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before. it resonates, for now the time has come for the bud to be broken and flowers to bloom in the late-spring night air.
the risk is nothing. nothing, really. there are only the long sprawling afternoons this side of summer, when paper is scrunched up into tiny little balls and burnt with a magnifying glass or matches. whichever, the result is all that matters. words are nothing: this air requires action!
and there are trees, so beautiful this time of year. they remind me of walking to school in the summer and inhaling the scent of apple tree blossom with T. those were the days, eh?
but now, no now, those buds will open and blossom will scatter into the hands of a handsome young man that we choose. for me, this sweltering summer, it’ll be you. and, god willing (an expression i borrowed from an altogether more believing friend of mine), next summer also. for T (if we were boys, she’d be a brother from another mother) it will be someone else. Her new beau (a rather lovely Tenessee expression!). her very first. amazing stength and will and beauty.
so here we are, and isn’t it queer to think we shall be here always? in the arms of another, in the throes of spring, the coming summer alighting hopes in every single one of us, as if petards were thrown at the pavement before us, at our feet, at our willing young hearts?
and we can’t help this feeling hopeful. and we can’t pretend we didn’t want this life.
so every year, like clockwork, we will be discoving those cherry soda loves and shedding blossom in each other’s arms.
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will anybody tell me if i’m missing out on life?
will anyone write me a letter just so i know?
and everybody seems to be making a film, a compilation of their thoughts right here, right now. irony is, i’m wasting my words on the wind, across the telephone wires that stretch inside my head. and when i am brave enough to speak my words out, they are spoken to you alone. what about the rest of the world? how will they ever know?
you made a film with your friends. i guess that’s what you do in youth.
me? i used to leave my colouring books blank for fear of spoiling them. funny me.
and whenever creativity came to me, i wrote the words, drew the pictures on scraps of paper. i still have some of them. little pieces of my mind written in quickhand. 
and though none of them relate to you, all that i remember of X is there: they are silent exultations, utterances of pain and dreams. they are free.
sometimes, i still wish i coloured those pictures in.
and sometimes i know there’s no use wishing: it’s all too late now. i’ve sketched my life out in this morning sunshine. whatever happens now was always meant to be.
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some days i realise
they wouldn’t be worth living
if i didn’t have you
pounding in my heart.
it sounds cliché,
somehow outdated, to say this here
and to say this now. almost
a long-distance call to atlanta
where skies flow like whisky down the throat,
and beach
and people, morning sunshine,
before receiver clicks in the ear
with mourning beep foreshadowing the silence
and storm
with a million shards of sounds
running like a movie in my eyes.
Posted in excerpts
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why was the moon shining so bright last night? and the night before last. the night before that it was cloudy but still it managed to peek through. and i don’t know what to say to you. i used to moon-watch when i was studying astronomy at school.
let me fall into this stupour. the whites of my eyes will turn into two big moons to shine on the world in the darkest light. for i am sin.
all sin.
and S is catholic.
beyond all means.
and i no longer know if he believes in love, because he believes in so little by believing in so much. if he ever asks, i shall tell him this much: that i no longer know him, because what he was to me is not compatible with what he is now.
i believe in choice. to me, choice is love.
catholicism is brutal: it gives no choice.
abortion is not an option he told me. what if the pregnancy is the result of rape? i asked. she’d still have to have the child.
my eyes glazed over. i forgot who i was speaking to.
and he’s not sure if he believes in contraception: life hasn’t forced him to think about that yet. how can anybody say that in a world with AIDS?
i’m lost. what does he know of the fire of desire that drives me on and on?
i know sometimes you have to let go and start again, from scratch. but i can’t. not now.
suppose i am Kai, from Hans Christian Andersen’s book, and he is the splinter of troll-mirror that befell into my eye.
how can i run away if it it’s in the mind?
Posted in chapters of my life
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glittering soot on her eyelashes 