Poems I wrote for someone I loved.

This was many years ago, and it lasted perhaps a year or two. As time passes it becomes harder to remember the exact moments that change us, and only a vague impression of life remains. Sometimes I think about it, and although I am now in other places and under other clouds and other stars, the poems I wrote when I loved another man back then still ring true and only sometimes feel like too much. I have scarcely read them one or two times in these years, and I thought: why not keep them here? The past might have been bleak, but it's mine still to cherish, and to do something with.

APARTMENTS

Separated by walls we're so alone

and yet we're so close

that we can

awake each other.

GLASSES

I see through my glasses your glasses melting

like honey under the sunset

but you only see through them

someone that is near me,

not me.

STUFF

I try to touch the stuff

that your hand hasn't touched

with my hand, that has touched yours.

A DAY

Not in learning to play the violin

or making money, or jesting,

or drinking as people often do,

or praying or killing or plucking flowers

from the wild fields,

or writing poems:

I wish to spend tomorrow,

a whole tomorrow,

just thinking of you.

GOOD AND EVIL

And if I shall see all evil

spring like a dead tree from a grave

underneath a sky of black clouds,

this evil will not be able to break

a golden evening of the past

in which the bell of your laughter

holds off on its own.

INCREDULITY

That I do not feel

pain but joy

at seeing you happy from afar!

That I am less

of an animal than I thought,

more of a chestnut tree;

that I do smile in the dark,

even though away from the light

of your photographs.

ACTS 17:23-27

And to think that every time I loved

I was already

loving you;

and that every sadness

was this sadness.

ON KISSING

There are many ways to kiss a man:

one of these is to laugh

at the exact same time that he laughs.

Another is to share a secret glance

without any of you even knowing

what the secret is,

or give him a hug;

a hug is a wonderful way to kiss.

But the best way to kiss a man

is to be there every single day

and hold his hand

when darkness comes

and he sleeps like a child

far away, in someone else's bed.

SHUTTING UP

Go away delicate words

that only know how to make mirrors.

Your sound is a song that doesn't fill

a far deeper silence; an absence.

SAD NIGHTS

I wasn't born for hope.

REGRET

And to think there is so much past

scarred in your heart

of which I am not a part.

Forgive me, I beg you, that I was

so enthralled in my own loneliness

that I wasn't there to end yours:

it took a happy one to save you,

and I was not

a happy one.

GODS

If gods could save us

they would have saved

those who were better than us.

COLORS

One day, only gold, blue, brown and black;

the brown of the meadow and the gold of the sun,

the ever-changing blue of the sky

and the black of your eyes at night...

No need for more colors, nor the orange of lonely evenings,

nor the white of empty walls;

not the same different black

of the abyss of a future at which I stare

alone.

IF I COULD

If I could just take this love

and make a life out of it

to give to others!

In a tired heart it becomes instead

bare poems

that run through my fingers

and like a collection of crushed flies end up splattered in the page.

ENDING

Now all the friends have gone silent;

they whose names I screamed inside

when I was about to die,

they have gone silent and you

as well, and her, and everything

just gone silent except for this;

this emptiness inside me

where the echo cries your name...

so sadly it calls for you

forever more.

And I stand alone at the crossroads,

all dreams shattered;

all dreams shattered again.

AFTER

After so much has passed

I still hear your steps behind me

like the rustling of dry autumn leaves

in the hallway.

A WEED

In the garden of my soul

I hoped for no more roses.

But this rose I didn't plant,

nor cared for, yet it keeps blooming

from the humble earth that cannot hold her

nor her long spines

that search for my secret heart to kill.

BOUND

In hurting me you made

this deep, pure love that I held

a deep, spoiled love

dirty from loving one who harms.

SUNFLOWERS

Death is so near by...

It falls in drops from the branches

of dark green spiky rest.

It fills the whole hearts

hidden in red fruits.

It is there so that only those who seek

may find it. I seek.

Sunflowers, remind me of his face

when he was still here. Sprout against

my will and against the careless earth.

Light again the hope, may there be

somewhere again stars;

somewhere again life.

Drink this water that I give you

and shine new light for my lost hope

that it may come back to me!

Sprout, sunflowers, sprout!

TIME

Time heals everything

but it leaves such hurtful scars

that one may forget they are healed.

POEM #19

Like the faint light of the immortal stars

like the returning song of the cicadas

like the thorny fruits of the meadow that grab on to you and won't let go

like the enduring aftertaste of a fig

like a never-ending sunshine

like the Pacific coast of California, where the sea gently kisses the rocks

for millions and millions of years –

I could have loved you so, if you had wanted eternity.