two months more of winter

(poems go hewe chose the table to the left that faced the walls of the courtyard my tea spilled through the cracks like rain in a graveyard and there were one two one two three grey leaves above us hanging onto the branches the ones on the grounds so covet never to be swept away by the approaching spring and i knew in that moment they weren’t merely caught they were still lingering on they were still singing two months more of winter i still have time yet. i hate to be caught between branches and heartache the rapid successions of clichés i try not to fake in your faded blue colored pencil love sent back to sender unopened you wrote hard pressed “wrong address “ and never had to lick the envelope twice. i see centuries passing and i could still not reach or determine the source of your shine with all the wisdom of a pained seventeen year old and all the perception of anyone with eyes i still have yet to understand all there is to see as that man from Bombay i met on the east bay whose eyes were clouded from cataracts and dreams that hit the pavement, sprinting and scraping along at undeterminably variant speeds he still ran the marathon first. still what happens to me when you say my name is the question i ask myself more than what are you doing with your life what should you have for breakfast more than my autonomic nervous system asks itself when i should breathe, when i need to sneeze because you’re beyond that. my body can beat my heart only so many times until you take it away and you regulate at your own desired pace i have no control anymore. i’ve already spent much of my life with the bottoms of my stained slippers that i bought at the goodwill scuffing up the dashboard reclining in the passenger seat with my camcorder on record and all the lights that pass are unidentified as seen from my angled lens i’ve seen so many road signs that line up with the seam of the window pane at my height you only can see sky even if you belong below the asphault. to have you behind the wheel in this forced and exhausted allegory while your thin rimmed glasses sit in the middle of the bridge of your nose it’s so much for me to handle. remember i suck at video games and we were all playing slender and i lived longer than anyone because i walked around and stared at the stars so fear couldn’t sneak up behind me and pierce my ears with casual static it was all too telling. and when i’m in your arms romantic, they say my hair hanging down (it’s grown longer since may) i dug my nails into your back my own experiment to see if you can feel. all i did was stare at the stars because around your feet were demons. you stepped around them because you knew where they were. the hunter knows not to step near the tiger pit. matter is distance only Siddhartha Gautama with vision that could fill ponds of eyes could see the electricity that stretches from my irises to yours but i swear when i feel the cool underbelly of your palm resting across my wrist the universe is speaking a language i only know when i’m treading your incandescent connections my mouth slips below every day and i find that i can breathe if i see your hand stretched from the raft above me above me below the asphalt tenderly trending towards my fragile frame i swear in that instant the electricity between the tips of our fingers between your calloused hands and my chipped purple polish i wonder how you can’t see it. i wonder how after all this time i still haven’t learned to swim away.