there is only trespass that matters (as if you can,
could step
hold
of one moment, untangle it from the rest, as if you could ever remember
where you had drawn the line, as if you
could ever distinguish yourself from this
and that, from this
for
that, to chisel out yourself of this
from everything in
between
in between you and I
lies
a handful of grenades held by tin cans and bleeding
gums. Here could never have been
there
but we longed the distance between us
like a twine around glass stems, gentle gentle but for the pull (or was that when you had said
“tension holds my knees apart for you”
there drinking
drinking from the wire seat and
the craw bloody in circumflection, body raw on the insides
and something
in the firmament, something in the way
your lips stretched and warped in your smile (all a smile is really a rubbing,
an ache across bones, look at it, nothing there but fat being pulled over a grill.
the matters,
the weeping matters,
the matter of the task at hand,
the matter of your hands in mine,
“is something the matter?”
And I could not
shake
myself right out from under myself,
I could not put myself
aside
for a moment (for a moment
or two you can leave
yourself behind, you can be
behind if you liked, you can be yourself,
and not this, you can be that,
I promise you,
sign on the dotted line.
how much would you pay for this (do you know how much I paid for this?
the ring’s gone down the drain and I want to make a fight about it, say wonderful things like
you stupid forgetful bitch, you couldn’t wait to forget this could you? But instead
I wonder where I am
going when I look in the mirror and see myself
leaving.
I wonder where I run to in the light
of day and come back terrified in my bed (i had shot up and said fuck to make it go away
knowing
that it doesn’t just go away like that
it never goes away
like that’s just for show, that’s just rattling
the cage a bit, to introduce something new to it,
like a martini: stirring out of bed her hand on my shoulder
“what? What is it?”
nothing
nothing (but old fears dying hard of growing old and dying. I can see it,
this is how it will be: the night sky and it all shuts down, not goes out, but
shuts
down,
age old having traveled
millions of years now knowing that
they’re dead so far away
you can’t help but be terrified of the inevitability:
the stars have gone away and
you’re so far away getting further
and there’s not a thing you can do
with your hands,
there’s absolutely no
touching about it.
there’s no distinction from when
and what. Only a trespass
that comes before the hands, these hands,
none
from this or that. Gold metal, even my name is in question.

“Writing…” she had said just as she had begun to enjoy him
fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, “you should be writing this all down”
and so it was all that he had imagined, if that were indeed possible, his imagining
the image stuck in his mind: he HAD imagined most of it, a nag at his ear: “you did,
you did it, didn’t you?”
she had told him in his sleeping that it wasn’t quite fair for him to have her
and he had told her, “shut up, shut up, don’t ruin this”
but she kept talking as he was kissing her, turning her head away,
saying how decent it was of him to not take her clothes off
as he was rutting against her thigh.
he thought of the safest way to prevent her and then, in dreaming, he remembered
the twisting slow motion of the knife tip as he stuck it into Arthur’s ribs,
and being terrified of it: the terrifying notion that he had been enjoying this
but Arthur suddenly respected him and that was what mattered.
“And what do you know about it?” he asked, biting into it. he wanted to tear himself
into her, to tear everything that had kept them, to remake her into something that tore
his clothes off and raked his skin and he would do anything to feel that again,
that velocity, that angle.
but he kept remembering and the remembering brought it centermost
and he was watching himself twist her arm when it had been Arthur’s and snapping it,
feeling so sad for himself and all the things he couldn’t tell anymore.
but that would bring up a whole host of complications.
“So much bullshit”, she said, “for a two minute event”
he knew he could satisfy some precaution of etiquette, just as soon as he could see
himself standing in the lobby, where she didn’t know who she was or why he had to drive her home.
it was later, at work, that the cook had told him
that she was now considering to be a lesbian.
he wanted to call her and patch things up, because of course now she was absolutely safe
and maybe that was what the dream was about: nothing to do with her
but about how he went out of his mind to murder someone he barely knew.