[1]
Exs,
I gather them like those
old highways, on an atlas,
that I had once possessed.
Since I have one too many,
do I have to invent a novel
scheme to number them perhaps 
just like the interstaes? 
EX 1, EX 2 and so on.

[2]
Tonight my thoughts travel
with the undulations of my heart.
They refuse to see that all the roads
have been boarded up, that the gates
of the fort have been risen and it's
useless to lay seige against walls
that are impenetratable. So they dash into
sheer stone. They are sucide bombers
wedded to a doctrine of despair,
asking questions: why can't 
you ex-tend
                me love?
and ex-cuse 
                my mistakes?
Again and again.

[3]
Ex is a versatile prefix,
predating and prevading
all my nightmares.
Ex as in Ex 
              pulsion
throw me out, on my ass.
Ex as in Ex
              communication
burn me at stake.
Ex as in Ex
              cution
you can't kill me for 
I am already dead.

-------------------------------------------------
2002:07:16 01:30 Atlanta

Since the majority of me Rejects the majority of you, Debating ends forwith, and we Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days For our majorities to rent With unshared friends and unwalked ways, But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities That, unopposed at last, return Each night with cancelled promises They want renewed. They never learn.

When first we faced, and touching showed How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost, The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting owed To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life That opened past your inch-close eyes Belonged to others, lavished, lost; Nor could I hold you hard enough To call my years of hunger-strife Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real. But when did love not try to change The world back to itself--no cost, No past, no people else at all-- Only what meeting made us feel, So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?