Next Year May Never Be

–

–

Part I: Next Year May Never Be

–

You were like the heat

leaving my body,

and then winter’s grieving,

the pigeons shivering in the rain,

the washed-out whites and aqua refrain,

cold water between toes,

and the bleak mornings so

hollow and pumice-like.

Respiring beneath heaps of bone-heavy blankets,

I lay siege to long minutes,

freezing to death, watching my breath chill

into lonely, floating souls that dissipate,

so desperate to disappear.

–

You’re gone. And if you come back,

I know I’ll be gone too.

–

–

–

Part II: One Year Later

–

I can picture the hot arc,

the mirage-like trail of the jet fuel

under the scorching sun

as your aircraft rumbles forward.

High noon is approaching and

some fate must be met at Terminal 2.

It’s been one year already

and I’m not ready

to meet you again.

I’m still subsurface,

grown comfortable with long-distance, mumbled ritual,

groping in fog

for a golden history that increasingly resembles

some ancient solar deity –

extinguished but still smoldering on.

–

You burn through the sky,

oblivious and ever closer,

and closer, and closer.

–

–

–

Part III: Congruence

 –

What did you see over there?

Who did you become?

The slow reveal of your new dimensions

occurs over coffees and spaced-out subway conversation.

The people there, you say, are different,

They have concepts we don’t,

Concepts you can speak of with nimble lips,

in acrobatic, alien tones,

and I like the one about the connection

between certain people that, once established,

is unshakable, whether good or bad,

and which must be maintained.

Since your return it’s all so different –

the visions of my great escape have deserted me.

 –

I know now that lives are tumbled together,

We grab onto others and hold on,

we hold on and we learn to love them more.

–

–

–

Part IV: Years On

–

Years on,

No longer an ardent effervesce

Of careening energy,

Our universe begins to cool.

There are hot spots here and there, yes,

But a new kind of spaced-out splendor

Now pervades our velveteen apartment.

Inexorably, admittedly,

The fragments of our former selves

Have been folded in,

Or edged out,

But each morning reifies your Buddhic majesty.

You, a brilliant node at home among the stars

And across time,

And something stirs within me,

Like a deep and mending bassline.

–

Under your spell, nothingness takes form.

Under your spell, our era unspools and I love it –

Perfectly delicate, epic, ephemeral.

–

–

Listen to the music version of Next Year May Never Be on SoundCloud here. 

–

–