[1] After taking my hands in hers, she thought a while before she spoke my name As if this were a protocol she had read about, in some book somewhere.

Some relationships are better left inside closed books.

[2] To know what love tastes like, It is essential that it stays alive.

Till date, none have survived.

[3] The river moves on, pulling behind it a glassy blanket As if it is trying to wake up someone who is fast asleep.

The drowned are never left in peace.

[4] Masks are being distributed in the streets, Select your latest assassin with care.

It’s election time again.

In every half-filled glass a river begging to be named, rain on a leaf, a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost trails behind, casting a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's outrageous loneliness detonated into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's face in their hands, and the world that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity or need. If the soul soars with longing the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing there's a pure want to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss, the space around it, the opposite of thirst, its shadow.

Your chalice was poisoned by a strange awareness And since I couldn’t drink that liquid I reached out to touch you wondering if things were lost.

But now I know it wasn’t loss that stood Between our previous departure and that arrival But him, he who had blown you into a different shape.

A concave mirror, with silver extracted from his body Slapped on the other side, you returned my signals of distress And converged love into an increasing heat at the focus.

There paper with my writing blazed, the sum of your memory, Saddened by these fictitious times, those flames unable to take the rich luster of the lamp that burned next to our bed all night!

If beauty can be exalted by athleticism in bed And desire can be mapped to the longevity of an erection How do I measure betrayal then?

Such questions asked on the April Fools Day Would find no answers. So I reconfigure associations: The turns of your speech, the blinking of your eyes.

They now don’t stand for playfulness as much as deceit. After that only excuses will remain, hedges Overgrown around another torched house.

The fire trucks left two weeks ago, I sniff At the burned timbers, somehow managing all the faithfulness of a family dog.

And who will tell the neighbors, When they are awakened tonight, What are the reasons of my howls?