for mari with the beautiful face

       head full of heart    heart for the page   and more than a few times full of rage

           for white girls  in headdresses

for minor inconveniences     the rich digression of the syracuse session 

      and stupid boys who can’t tell one soul from the other

for ‘why do i even bother?’

      where are the white boys in singapore?           there’s nothing she is wanting more     than to be able to stretch it out and enjoy the clouds  of doubt    be loved like she deserves    and shout     

dance  to dance to draw    okay  go    alone     

 use the phone  not  exactly something she’s known   for    like a noise floor    from  the time when     we became friends   

through a silly south korean girl who thought time was the only measure of loyalty   who thought songs were just choruses strung together    who ran late      hid hate   never accepted that whole  ‘jesus was a black man’ fate     

water comes in       leally                like lion

she didn’t give much   see      her game was take      but she did  say    

‘peter  this is marissa’

five minutes to midnight the looming exam   that’s when yankee-man funny man   sam    said  okay okay just one more question   explain to me what kind of situation 
leads to long term potentiation

you have five minutes

  we were all actors then    moving from an old role 
                            into one we could  defend  

and learning the words           of  the      were  sing   errr

   shouting at clouds   and wishing she heard

okay i will tell you right now

ultraviolet light is purple      
                  this is a world you’d never know     
  
and  this       this?

         this is the basement troll   

for the desk sketch     the tshirt mess       
       she was right/i was right   that’s what  meyer confessed  
                       but the footswitch    he kept  

and mari   with the beautiful face     went to england     then  to singapore  and i thought maybe i wouldn’t hear anymore  then   back to england   told me she hated living there   i said  keep coming  west   i’ll buy   dinner    seem fair?    but she thought i was talking to somebody else         would not   could not be herself    not yet

 but she is a-ok with how things changed 
                         and that’s the best news i heard all day

  

                                  drawing by mari lee

true is trueis true

motel bathroom  soaking wet    the football notch on the old rust belt 

  i remember how it felt

                           how it feels

 how much hurt it takes to

 make it   real

you heard me norman    anyone but her

                   not    her

i tossed and turned  

and loathed the snoring that kept my mind   to her    on   her  

high expectations    lack of divine                                       

 the jacobean confession

don’t want to stand in the way   be in the way me in the way   but this   this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to high stakes in the great lakes   oarless lifeboats  

               heads at or below    

 waterlines   don’t even think ‘it’s fine’ 

it’s not

              the struggle just to float or to find your way back on the boat

                            these boys have got irons in the fire though   quite a few  whether they learned it from me or already knew    true is true

but the struggle isn’t with irons or industrialism it is with selfishness and       the expectations      damned twice   

but now sufficed and  only ‘ electric mainline’ high when i would            like them to be ‘lazer guided’  high 

‘ladies and gentlemen’ high

like the qualities ascribed  to a shy  relative-stranger who remembers so well nearly everything  i  say but still never truly looks my way just extends her arms at length to say  that  one       fucking        word       she said it        i heard    and  i    i just watch ohio      waiting for her to be   old-er or  bold-er or a certain kind of smarter     to realize the value of why it is we try harder                                  the ussses   

i wonder if it could be     truth   or merely the consequence of  overly lonely    the fall-back   only   but quiet is calling     the rain is falling

all the those  curls are whispering   ‘bony’     screaming  ‘only’  

negative    ‘feared’   ‘figured’   ‘weird’  

lacking the concrete nature of relation    pleasantly deflating each salutation       but still stealing my words     and phrases      entire weeks of days   

the whole of this settlement   is   betterment   

finally    we  knew       

we   could   see    

                       dead right foot tells me  heavily   that the dream doesn’t come true not for her not for you  

not  based on the force of the night-time feeling not on the amount of sorrow come stealing 

not on the boards pressed so neatly together 

made of coincidence gathered   bits of time

                            and the weather

there are ways to be wanted    there are ways

then   hypocrisy noticed that i don’t have the truth   any more than you  

and everyone knows that true is true

but   her   she heard it before  she knows what it was 

                                 how it faltered  the why    the because  

just a little bit more    right here   i think  

                     we’ll get the lines    to finally   blink 

  point to the end and actually get there

      have enough courage to stop and to stare

     at all the new light that gets in this room

wonder ‘how could anyone sleep until noon?’