the apathy diet

false triptych #2

ejw — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:45:22 +0000

I. In the past you were stale and sticky like old beer and I could not peel your hands from my hips. I know I couldn’t look at you when you kissed me, but neither could I close my eyes.

II. Sometimes now you are a black hole that pulls me in at the top of the steps. Your shirt is two sizes too big and my hands pull it close around your waist, calming the air and closing a vacuum.

III. When you put your knuckles to your mouth to laugh, when your sleeves are rolled up just above your elbows, music is peeking out of your corners like light under a doorway and your eyes are a robin’s egg on the sidewalk, cracked open to spill a feeling that has no name or ending.

ejw — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:12:02 +0000

The calm is blinding
and becoming almost indistinguishable from the buzz
I could speak to you in tongues
and your eyes would stay the same shade of wide
ringed with blue and buzzing with the same rhythm
If I could dig my nails any deeper into your skin
I might turn your irises black
You could call me by any name
and I would answer to it
to break the silence that vibrates with your touch

false triptych #1

ejw — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:44:17 +0000

I. Life was like alternating tides in your hands. I spent my time in crushed nausea between your currents, confused and longing, and calm waters slow and disappointed.

II. You seemed so delicate, almost like a girl with your shirt hanging off one bony shoulder, and I wanted to imagine it undone, but you were so easy to underestimate.

III. All your windows face to the east, and our evenings never saw you in direct sunlight, so tell me why the present seems so bright, and the future so dim.

this time

ejw — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:58:38 +0000

I was rolling in your current
with eyes open,
Slight and threading downstream.

My eyes were slipping closed with your sleep;
lucid dreaming of real things that had been
and how alive you used to seem.

I was lying in your bed
and wrapping my arms around an idea of you,
visions on my eyelids
of all the better places I could be.

ejw — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:11:11 +0000

I don’t know much about love
but I would pay to smash you
on a hard tile floor like a cheap porcelain doll.
Because there is something about
the way your t-shirt rests on your collarbone–

and it has always been that way–

that makes me want you collared and tethered like a dog

triptych #5

ejw — Tue, 17 May 2011 21:47:54 +0000

I. I am the reason I never had more than a minute’s chances with anything. Sitting on steps with you became the same thing as being in love, because we were together, you, me, and cigarettes. Strange became anything, holding court in a playground planetarium and I took closer to be a state of mind.

II. Nothing ever dies, and I have beautiful sore spots that flower like fields in blood and lymph and bruises. Your fingerprints were black on my neck and it was nothing short of spectacular that heavy silence and the same song on endless repeat even failed to slow you down.

III. My greatest love is the possibility and words that mean nothing to anybody except someone I used to be. I was the stranger and I shot myself four times to spend eternity in purgatory here with you.

ejw — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:13:39 +0000

You’re not the kind

who stops to think

when I’m leaning on your car door,

folding what looks like a question in my hand.

Memories always feel like summer,

hot and ethereal,

and I suppose there’s more left to you than memories,

but it doesn’t feel like it.

You have no winter in you.

And that folded question

looks like a piece of paper,

but it is warm

and my legs are bare

and its crease is the hem of your t-shirt,

held between my fingers.

ejw — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:01:21 +0000

along the top of the wooden cabinet
a large carpenter bee
left feathered imprints of its legs
in a layer of white insecticidal foam snow
made tickmarks as it wandered back and forth and slowly
died

ejw — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 16:11:31 +0000

of slight stature
your shoulders are beautiful in the sunlight
you couldn’t not know that
your eyes are dull as gold is dull
and green reflected by the grass

if you are tired as I am tired
of vampires and che guevara and parkour and girls in going out skirts, of movies you forget the plot of and new architecture, of streets with sidewalks on only one side
if you are tired as I am tired

ejw — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:38:14 +0000

I don’t want you to think that I write about you

but I do

I am fascinated