Together and by Ourselves Read online

  I want to know “why” all the time—even now—about everything.

  The years come and they’re numbers. They have nothing to say.

  Today

  Today in your hours above the earth

  you have questions

  that won’t trouble you inside it.

  Affairs

  As if to appear in the months and what follows

  is to do something major: a marriage, new city,

  the end of a life with someone.

  Is it lucky to live or embarrassing?

  In the meeting on budget and profit

  no one had much to say about that.

  I see you in the garden light and after;

  taking off your shirt, tipping my head back,

  while the clock is like a painting in the background.

  It never stops, it never rests.

  Under the surface of the lake all the fish

  became countless shades of blue rust.

  The oars threaded through both water and air.

  And I’m supposed to choose who I live with,

  and I’m supposed to choose how to live.

  Above the ground, through the clouds

  this delay on the earth once.

  By the midnight-tinged bowties

  with my useless, impractical needs.

  If I could return anything while I’m here,

  where would I look for who wants it?

  Sleeping through oil and gold

  in a dream of the world without people.

  It’s hard to imagine but look, it was true once.

  Boys in the Pines, fires in the Grove

  where I walked everywhere barefoot.

  Fasting and gluttony. Minor and more so.

  The dirt that won’t tire of us and an afternoon

  spent but still going on somewhere.

  And there was a peach out of season.

  Like I imagine we live.

  The 25th Hour

  Before I took his picture I asked Matthew

  to think of one thing he couldn’t refuse.

  He returned a phone call. I took his picture.

  And with us the earth moved at just over 1,000 miles.

  What are the eyes and how do they choose…

  me in your white shirt. The kitchen lemon. A cuff link.

  A wineglass on top of a book in a bed.

  When it’s too much, I smoke a cigarette inside the apartment.

  When the trains empty (around three in the morning),

  I don’t want to sit.

  The Carlyle lights up and for someone it’s Wednesday

  when truly it’s past that.

  What is the mind and how do I choose…

  you in my white shirt. The hair parted over or back still.

  Severely. The doctor wants three to four vials

  and thinks that he knows me.

  I like that. I like him.

  Exiled on earth amid the shouting crowds.

  She would slip through the service entrance on 77th

  and up there the president waiting…

  he thinks that he knows her.

  We ’re here and in color but black and white suits us.

  She liked that. She liked him.

  And after millions of years (or 200 nearly),

  the day turns out longer. A twenty-fifth hour of secrets.

  A twenty-fifth hour without you.

  I think I’ve had plenty of glasses and lemons

  though lately I want more.

  Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées.

  It could not have been anything else. It was this.

  The 13th Month

  A little of our misplaced lives,

  we saw them waving on the roof in the dark

  and thought they were birds.

  Who you were underneath the umbrella.

  In the best of memory no one has a real part.

  Part of it, he kept thinking, is to try and say something

  of what everyone brought instead of themselves.

  Like that hour you were more of a person than had been in years.

  Because it was eyes, mouth, and less real—more senseless;

  nothing the hands can take back. You’ll excuse me

  while I write it all like a postcard. You’ll excuse me,

  I went to the thirteenth month of the year looking for you.

  No matter the matter he was found in mostly low places.

  He was birds. He was bird.

  And lately, lately seems a place in time

  that’s happening never and always.

  Lately I’ve taken to two of you like a pill or a fruit.

  Some of life. Some more choices.

  (He tried them. I tried you.)

  Unforgivable but drawn to red things.

  And while not entirely about us, we attended our lives.

  We stayed. And stayed longer. Then, he said,

  when you look at the snow…who do you think of?

  “It all seems impossible, but so real. There are witnesses.”

  On the back of a photograph, one by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

  Like days when I wait for myself to return.

  What I mean, where I went; we’re all missing.

  You’ll understand if I write it all like a postcard.

  I have nowhere to send it but here—

  written for you—and too soon.

  Poem with William

  Looking for the news, I found the blue corridor

  where nothing happens. It was blue.

  We just kissed.

  And because I took you there you were quiet.

  It seems people are everywhere and so few.

  A hand has five fingers. Five fingers and five thousand wants.

  Seemingly endless. This defense of obsession.

  How the cars, they did carry us.

  In the plane we were what asked to go far.

  Soon could mean anytime, any way…and like all of it

  nothing was soon. Soon was no thing.

  Our mouths were small gifts in the distance.

  We were seen: so high up and withdrawn—

  which is where you would like to remember,

  which is how it all tastes.

  I do feel you, pressing against a stranger for so long

  and it was my own bones after all.

  He admired how the child would not answer the question.

  He admired how he told of the day without us.

  It’s a small room in the back where we’re going.

  The truth is, I’m wearing a black belt

  and nothing grips quite like you do.

  It’s possible to get the news from poems,

  impossible to say what we are.

  Every day on the way to the last one

  I think: description is useless.

  And still someone had to describe it.

  To make it less cold, to unmake what was already there.

  Without photographs. Without headlines.

  It’s difficult to see the world from the world.

  And it’s true. We were in it.

  With these partial and unlikely days.

  Lifetime

  There must be ways to delay the past

  from so frequently arriving. Shoes on the bed,

  keys inside the coat not meant for seasons.

  Someone’s body is a bomb

  inside their well-built home.

  Suit days. Full days. Less days.

  Drama. Comedy. Opera.

  Dress nights. Fall nights. All night.

  Prose. Verse. Prose—

  the costly comma.

  Hold on, one more thing then:

  one minute, one second,

  almost there, right on time,

  5 late, 10 late, so late,

  walking now, walking past,

  on it, by it, in the back, toward the front,

  right around, right beside,

  right behind—finally
here,

  finally done, finally with you.

  Do you see me?

  Do you see this? Do you see us?

  Do you see?

  The Hall of Mirrors

  So then I pressed myself to one window after another

  and saw where the image began.

  I walked through the rooms with all of the people…

  their black shawls, sharp collars, small hearts.

  And before the last hour of getting together

  they asked if we wanted a drink or a story,

  a polish or chip in the paint. Yes, I said.

  I’ll have both. I’ll have many. I’ll have more than a lot.

  And did we talk about love? I think we talked about love.

  Did we stay late in our leaving? I remember that too.

  You swam in the ocean. I walked on the earth.

  The hall of mirrors was empty.

  Our eyes played guests for the night.

  And now, before the obvious ending

  I’ve somehow come up to the roof. Here

  where our voices sound indistinct, almost impossible.

  Who would think (I left without telling anyone)

  it was ever just us.

  II

  Famous and Nowhere

  Life is like Los Angeles. Bright and disappointing.

  I watched you closely on the pier that wasn’t home.

  They grew up in parking lots once and now they are stories;

  speeding and smoking through yesterday’s games.

  Past the stone angel heads and over the calm brutes,

  the freeway thins and wears white like a patient tonight.

  I get lost on the way but I always return here.

  Once I’d like to be left and unheard from.

  I’d like to be nothing.

  LA woman, Sunday afternoon.

  Take off your jeans, put on a curse.

  When in the evenings you fill that one glass

  in the mornings you feel it.

  The sun’s been a sun for four billion years.

  So on these obvious screens where I’m with you

  it does get religious. The billboards keep selling us love

  when the people are too hard to find.

  Patrick, Lucas…I must be forgetting.

  I do live without you.

  The moon’s been a moon and for no one, four billion ways.

  Still…I remember driving up Mulholland in August,

  no phone calls or questions. No faces.

  You said, “if anyone knows where we are,”

  if there’s photos but nothing to show here.

  Life’s like LA.

  It’s famous and nowhere.

  Leaving town I sat next to a senseless and beautiful boy

  who asked where I live.

  His unwashed hair or the way his eyes were just eyes…

  the soul is a tiring thing. You can have it.

  I don’t know what you mean’s what I told him.

  It’s more simple than that. I’m just passing through.

  The Standard

  When we sit down D says, “I just down them.”

  The foyer is dark. You wouldn’t see anyone coming for you.

  If they were, if we are; going backwards and forwards

  over the bridges, into the same sinking beds.

  We want to know what it feels like to die

  but we don’t want to die.

  You wanted me happy, come happy,

  and now that I’m happy—now what?

  I need you to check your eyes

  and make sure you’re seeing this clearly

  when you’re seeing me often

  in stairwells, hotel rooms, the car or these bars.

  Last month you tell me, I’m ready for spring too,

  spring comes and I tell you, I’m ready for fall.

  Ready for summer. Ready for one more new season

  to take up my body and stay.

  Don’t be kind to the body.

  It’s just one more body.

  Not once was it kindness that stayed on the menu

  with people like us.

  I’m on my fourth now, he’s on his third.

  Look the foyer stays dark here.

  Your mother goes quiet.

  Our fathers are all the way

  going and going then gone.

  One cigarette I smoked on the roof of The Standard,

  I didn’t even finish it. Transfixed by all of that water,

  the hundreds of cars and the ways people take themselves out.

  And however true, to whoever had gone up there with me,

  I said lucky life. That no one gets to return to the past.

  No matter our tedious days of ambition, no matter the nights.

  The nights, the nights—

  these endings we’ve learned to stay up for.

  The flaws we recall and regret

  when our tricks stop to work.

  The Last Luxury, JFK Jr.

  Born of the sun, we traveled a short while toward the sun.

  Where there were seasons and sky. Where there were monuments.

  Like a single-engine plane in a July haze.

  Or our nights that pile up like shoes in a guest room.

  I would talk about the weather when I’m in the right weather but when.

  At the Stanhope Hotel, just hours before, they were people.

  The Navy divers found them lying under one hundred and sixteen feet of waves.

  Or a small body of water meeting a new, larger body.

  Healthy body. Nobody. We just couldn’t decide.

  Spatial disorientation occurs when you don’t refer to your instruments

  and begin to believe the whatever inside you.

  When I punished the Austrian roses by forgetting about them

  I knew that they couldn’t keep beauty and they couldn’t keep time.

  The day of his father’s funeral: November 25, 1963, was also his third birthday.

  Then—sometimes: the urge for new windows.

  A color other than black for the best days.

  In fourteen seconds plummeting at a rate beyond the safe maximum.

  The safe maximum at the office, bedroom, or bar.

  On the way there, somewhere between floors, no velocity could recover us.

  And again. Sometimes the right music,

  sometimes lucky to be in good light.

  Once a week I go into a room and pretend to have similar interests.

  Every day I wake up and brush to the left.

  We’re the good people, the bad people and the people we aren’t.

  Socialite, journalist, lawyer. Americans. These Americans.

  They always button their coats when they see luck.

  Dear Johnny boy, thanks for asking me to be your mother

  but I’m afraid I would never do her justice.

  My eyebrows aren’t thick enough for one.

  But you know, it was like eating the best grapefruit.

  Being here. Here (and then what).

  “…yet once you start answering those questions…where do you stop?”

  The old photograph of a young salute.

  That one send-off to death, family; the beginning of character.

  Maybe you know it’s the last year of the century. So come late and leave early.

  (Others flying similar routes reported no visual horizon.)

  It’s the last luxury. To go early and never come back.

  Lindsay Lohan

  It’s a cold rehearsal before we all drive off.

  The ride out is mindless and short on goodbyes.

  And in the flurry of parties she lost her passport.

  A slow smoke, a think in the old car…

  how they moved through their places and phrases

  and on to the bedroom where mostly we kept it all in.

  People won’t tell you, but if you lose enough things you do become something.
>
  All day the water endlessly filters so it’s not the same pool.

  In the morning our photos looked darker than us

  and the subject we were was a gamble (I know).

  The night winds came through and the gin took it well.

  Voyeur. Soho House. No one told us about us.

  I don’t remember, but you wanted me happy or loose like your change?

  Because it’s not written here or it’s not written well

  and the boys flitted out of the Aero like men do.

  From one to two I saw three. No mistake. Nothing but getting undressed.

  And then you. They said you sped through those hills and would not stop.

  They said you had nothing to say in Marina del Rey.

  Reno—Monroe—1960. I know all these lines, John.

  I promise you I do. Yes, baby, we know that.

  And Cook, presumably speaking to Huston, said kindly on the recorder:

  “We must have 86,000 feet of sound film by now.”

  So tonight, we’d like to invite only you to this soft light.

  It could be your first time, it could be a waste.

  Her arm was full of bracelets, one of which, she said, had been given to her by S.

  And sometimes I think: I’m at this dinner forever.

  It’s like home. I don’t leave without paying something.

  When they wrote about you and you showed your tattoos,

  everyone had grown tired but they were tired without you.

  It was late on some coast where you walked and for now it was quiet.

  The gulls couldn’t tell what we were so they stared. They kept watching.

  Pretend otherwise but we just couldn’t stop.

  Los Angeles, NY

  What he can’t remember is why soon they’ll stop meeting

  in the gold, lonely rooms. Through the old streets, through history,

  the limousine came and inside it you flipped like a page in a cheap paperback.

  The ride into death glowed past summer

  and the end took a long time to write—mostly descriptive:

  peeling away the fruit’s meat and the smell still under your nails.

  Like a scarf, the adjectives barely covered us.

  Although it was beautiful, the dialogue revealed little about anyone else.