There’s a hole in my heart
where the stars should be.
Although I try to fill it
with people, with activities,
I’m always shy
of getting there—
No. In actuality,
I am an infinite distance away.
My smile lingers on the event horizon,
a ghostly thing,
while the rest of me is beyond
the touch
of anyone, or anything.
I deleted your messages
because they were too beautiful;
it was painful
being so understood.
I thought, I could do this on my own,
this life with its loneliness—
but I misunderstood
this life,
and how absolute
its loneliness.
Now I’m here on a stoop,
wishing,
I never deleted
the only things left of you.
Sometimes you have to separate
from your writing.
Treat it like a clingy lover;
put some distance
between yourself
and their morning breath.
Stick too close to it and
eventually the bad is all you’ll see.
But back up—watch
your writing saunter down the street.
Note how quickly the hounds come
for its curves and fertility.
Allow yourself to be
a little jealous.
You’ll quickly learn
to move past the trivialities,
to once again
see
the electric rawness that upturned
the mundane world and made it beautiful,
and then you’ll feel
a tightening in the hot loins
of your mind.
From where
does peace arise?
Does it ascend from victory,
drums of conquest, black smoke
of wars won
by fractions of mankind?
Or is peace like the moon,
itself a summit
of imagination and hope?
Is peace the percussion of the heart,
or the stillness of the night?
Why, then, does it seem to find me
between beat and silence?