[A] Why do you resist silence? The universe is silent, mile after mile. You are the universe.

Why this impulse to flee? Everything that is outside yourself Is you as well.

Why this restless pacing in the body cage? Observe how wind shakes loose The leaves from a rooted tree.

You too, send, first send your life deep Into this earth. Let time blow desires away. Realize the nature of all things.

[B]

"Who are you?" You give Your name. The universe asks Again, "Who are you?" You say where you come from And where you plan to go.

You go on pulling tricks From this hat called you. You pull out your past loves, You pull, really pull out your demons. You pull out your wrinkled childhood. You pull out songs, you pull out Half remembered poems. You pull out street corners you Had sighed at and laughed at.

You finally pull out the top Of the hat. Now hold it up, See your hat holds a piece Of the infinite night sky. This is who you are!

At a table, you glimpse a prominent, square jaw Perched on a slight earnest body. Yet there is something evasive And straining in her beauty. From the girl, you now direct Your eyes to the menu Plastered on your side of the glass.

You chant a few names & descriptions off the top, roll these sounds around On your tongue, as your eyes saunter back inside the establishment and sweep the multitudes Till that face swims back from the smoke. You interrogate it as you pretend to read through the wine list.

“What is the name you chant when kissed? How do you measure love? What do you hide behind your fistful of heart?” The pane answers back with your face. Then it’s time to face away, Then it’s time to step back into The rain, with questions unanswered, dishes, now with familiar names, uneaten.

Dear Elliot, you are long since gone And I am not sad anymore.

The twin speakers are breathing Your hushed lyrics into the room

Whose words possibly came to you As you walked up and down the main

Street, that sidewalk’s widening cracks Became a metaphor for your life.

I arrived at that point too. My fall, however, was broken by dandelions caulking the gaps.

You had your Angeles and I have had mine. They became one when they gave us utterance.

Today, sun is a bursting orange on a blue plate. Held up to it, my nightmares are laughable.

Yours, however, killed you. The tape has stopped playing.

Your voice continues to uncoil Into the ambiguous silence. Either/Or.