Dan Savage is so fucking badass… and the idiot kids who walk out during his talk are basically:
You and the Champagne, Nabokov and the Shelter Sky (4/15/12)
I remember you then
As we drank champagne in bed on a quiet Sunday morning
I was reading Nabokov, you were reading the Sheltering Sky
Oh, what darlings of youth
I still have the Bowles, brittle paper, broken spine, loose pages slipping free
Do you have the Nabokov? A book you refused to read
Do you still push the sheets down during the night
to become tangled, like emotions, at our feet
I remember you then
The bitterness tempered by the sweet sparkling wine
Though I still carried the weight of my sins
Sagging shoulders holding up the heaven
Once promised in your smile
I still carry that burden now
As I remember you then
You and the champagne, Nabokov and the Sheltering Sky
11,541 Red Chairs in Sarajevo (4/10/12)
11,541 red chairs in Sarajevo
One each for those we lost
An indictment of hate and indifference
The hatred of those who fired the shots
The indifference of us all who looked away
11,541 red chairs in Sarajevo
Smaller chairs for the children
Would you leave a teddy bear on one of those chairs
if you were there?
Would I?
11,541 Red Chairs in Sarajevo
A slash across the page
Glaring crimson fire
Burning into my eyes
Demanding attention and action
11,541 red chairs in Sarajevo
mutely asking the questions
Are you Bosnian? Are you Serb? Are you Croat?
Is there a difference?
Aren’t we all the same?
11,541 Red Chairs in Sarajevo
and I am changed
I am humbled
I am lessoned by the loss
I am shamed
11,541 Red chairs in Sarajevo
A promise to the future
This time, for once
Never again, please God
Never again
Owned by Silence (2/25/12)
Tell me your secrets
Tell me your lies
Tell me stories of your day
Tell me anything and I will listen
and if I don’t say anything in response
except the occasional mmm-hmm and uh-huhs
it isn’t that I don’t care or want to hear your words
It is only that I am, at times,
owned by silence
and it leaves me with nothing to say
I still feel your ghost (2/18/12)
I still feel your ghost in all the places we used to haunt
clinging nostalgia dragging me back there
though I no longer belong
I am exiled, forbidden access
a traveller with no destination to call me forward
biding time, the interminal wait
***
I feel your ghost around me here
in the crisp cold cut of the morning
the ragged tearing of the wind, shrilly whistling
through the not quite closed window
and the empty space of my bed
There is snow on the mountains
***
I feel your ghost in that too
2/7/12 Revised Today
You are not the tears I shed
and I am not the words you speak
as we are not these things that make us
Separate/together
What is the sum of us
words and tears
The whole seen in fragments
Like the items thrown haphazard into an overnight bag
for a weekend tryst,
forgotten, put aside
Only to be discovered later in the back of my closet
the scattered remains of what was/is
words and tears,
You and I
whole/apart
pieced together, the archeology of love
the shards of memory
Lost and found
And I am not the tears you shed,
as you are not the words I write
Yet we are perhaps these things that make us
Together/separate
2/7/12
You are not the tears I shed
and I am not the words you speak
as we are not these things that make us
Separate/together
What is the sum of us
The whole seen in fragments
Like the items thrown haphazard into an overnight bag
for a weekend tryst, forgotten, thrust aside
Discovered later in the back end of my closet
the scattered remains of what was/is
You and I
whole/apart
pieced together, the archeology of love
And I am not the tears you shed, as you are not the words I write
Yet we are perhaps these things that make us
Together/separate
An October Morning (2/1/12)
Ashes spreading through water
swirls of grey upon grey of different shades
In the cool October morning
the living deck beneath, moving with the swell
like the ashes, moving too,
spreading with current and tide
finding its way
Looking to the shore, I see these hills
Lines across the land,
breaking the horizon
etched across my heart
I know them so well
Like I know my name
Like I know the sound of my father’s voice
calling my name
