the very least person

My silence is a carnival.

[theveryleastperson]

My greatest regret is how rarely my heart has been broken. Heartbreak comes between love and poetry.

[theveryleastperson]

I’m beginning to be able to feel things again. It always starts with getting my sadness back.

[theveryleastperson]

Your absence never leaves me alone.

[theveryleastperson]

I’m worn out with the fatigue of sleeplessness and not seeing you.

[theveryleastperson]

I knelt down beside you and held up your hands to explain their beauty. It was the first time I touched you, and you smiled as if you shouldn’t.

[theveryleastperson]

World Music

An American sits at the base of a statue In the light rain, pushing puffs of smoke Over his drooping jaw. Others have gathered In the dusky winter grey, clutching Umbrellas and each other. A child stands before them, delicate as frost, In heavy clothes, a black watch cap Belying a fluttering brown mane. She holds a guitar much larger than she. I lean against the nearest wall, watching While she plays that instrument As if she had been born with it, Raising her voice in a bold And gritty vibrato That her years cannot account for. She plays her soul through that guitar, Casting it over the crowd To be dissolved in the light rain And soak into our clothes and our skin And change us. A kind of white aura rises from her, Like a discharge of spiritual energy, Cascading in all directions, Waving rhythmically, like some Opalescent blood-warm flame. I'm not ashamed that I want to cry; I want to let the dampness stream Down my face to be dried by the cold wind That is raining leaves and other bits Of folial matter all over me, Embedding them in my hair. I love that little girl, And all the people who stand around Watching in wordless joy, And all people across Asia And across the oceans, And I send out great pulses Of love and oneness That penetrate the Earth and spring up As forgiveness and understanding And radiate and scatter In waves across the universe. But before I can cry, a smile Creeps to my eyes And frustrates their plans.

[theveryleastperson]

A broken heart is poetry in an embryonic state.

[theveryleastperson]

History

I came home and she was dead. It wasn't the first time, of course. She's always dead when I come home now. That part isn't new. Her death has been true for so long now that I'm forgetting to doubt it. I'm forgetting to shiver when I step into the house and find her little noises absent; forgetting to wait expectantly on the threshold, as if it might not be true this time. What has changed is that this will be the last night I come home knowing it. It's good that it should happen this way, I think. Sensible. I don't blame the house. I'm not that foolish. It was tainted by the history it recorded. She took the tarnish off for awhile, and there was hope that it could be blotted out and written over. But maybe it was inevitable that her story would bleed into it. It's true I don't blame the house, but even so, it's better this way. By now, the sofa is gone, where I found her sister that evening, scraping her moist palms on her knees; and the plaster wall with the dent in the shape of my mother, that I tried to hide with pictures. From the thickness of the air, I think it won't be long before the staircase falls, where I knocked my father down on the last day I would hide my head. It's surprisingly difficult, this choice. I wouldn't have thought so. My writing table faces a window. It's open and a cool breeze is battling the smoke.

[theveryleastperson]

I am not young now, but I'm learning.

[theveryleastperson]

My Knack

I’m trading sad thoughts for sad songs. I’m admitting that no one may ever be in love with me again; I’ll never hold a softer hand or kiss red lips while red-cheeked, or hug hello with my eyes closed. I’ve lost my knack for feeling sad. The sky is dark and I want to cry at it, but my eyes remain cool by mistake. It’s so disappointing. You grow accustomed to a thing. But it’s a beautifully dark sky, after all.

[theveryleastperson]

I can create. And as long as I can create, I can go on.

[theveryleastperson]

Getting There

I don't know what you are to me, other than vital. I'll never forget that feeling when you found me. It still matters. But I can't make things happen the way that you can. I have no money and no strength, and no cause to believe in fortune. I couldn't let you take me on as a burden, and I don't see any other way of getting there. Besides, you know only the romantic in me, the spurious poet. There are other parts appended that you wouldn't know what to do with. Put together, I am someone who just wants to learn to be kinder, to be stronger; to be safe. I don't know if there is anything more I will every be able to accomplish.

[theveryleastperson]

Being hateful to others is as close as as some people can get to loving themselves.

[theveryleastperson]

Impossible Lack

My cat got sick on my bed

and I felt like dying.

It wasn’t just dealing with the mess,

but that I had no space for more dealing.

My sheets were ruined and I sat on the couch

and advised the universe

that it may as well erase me,

because all I had ever done with life

was to get in the way of my living.

The more time I spend alone

the more I resent my failure

to achieve the kind of boredom

that motivates change,

that stimulates creation.

Nonexistence sounds useful.

I think about it a lot.

But I don’t want to be the cause of it.

It would be noticed;

it would have more resonance

than anything else I have done.

I don’t want to leave a residue.

If I can’t be pulled out of time without a trace,

I’ll have to stay,

try to do things that matter,

to no longer have a life

that takes all my muscle

just to swim through it.

But I lose battles in my brain

with the caveman inside who clubs down

that risky desire for companionship,

that scary artistic ambition.

The part of me that fears the tiger

always wins out

against the part that wants to paint

its picture on the wall.

[theveryleastperson]

I Don't Want a Cookie

I don't want a cookie or a roll. I don't want you thinking I'm lost because once I was sad enough to write it down, or because faces make me cry with the kindness of their teeth. It's not for you to bear the flaws in my voice from a ghost I'm chewing, when I'm more attentive to the break in the threshold than to your hips in the doorway.

[theveryleastperson]

Alone

I was lying here in the safety of my bed when I was stunned to see two human figures walk casually into the room from the direction of the closed front door. They walked past my bed toward the windows behind me, gazing curiously out, and seemed to vanish, though not all at once; I could see the streetlight reflecting in their eyes even as their shapes blackened and lost form. I knew beyond doubt that though I had lost sight of them, I wasn't free of their presence. Paralyzed, I tried repeatedly to say the words “Please leave,” in the hope that they were neutral, passive spirits that wouldn’t stay where they were unwanted; but I couldn’t force more than a choked gasp from my throat.

Just when I began to believe that they were gone, or imaginary, I heard a rustling from the foot of the bed. When I forced myself to look, I saw one of them, the female, balancing like a child on top of the bookcase. She was wearing my robe. She turned and stared at me with the darkest expression you can imagine; in fact more so. It was such a coldly, coolly evil face that your waking mind would protect you from confronting a picture of it. It was all the more cruel in being almost beautiful, a subtle but undeniable corruption of a womanly ideal. I could vaguely make out the other of the two, a man, standing a few feet closer in shadow, just at the foot of my elevated loft bed. By then I knew that they were not passive spirits, though they were most certainly not human.

I envy you now, because if you’re reading this, you are doing so wrapped in the security of your personal reality. But even now, I’m reluctant to lower the device that I’m using to write this, which I picked up for comfort as soon as that dark face at the end of my bed faded into a purer darkness, accompanied by a sharp pain in my strained neck. Its light has made everything else black, and I’m not entirely confidant of what my eyes will find when they learn again to separate the shapes around me. Am I alone, or is my waking mind trying to protect me from being confronted by my helplessness in the face of such inhumanly playful malice? So many hours still separate me from the daylight you’ve forgotten to be thankful for. I guess we’ll see.

[theveryleastperson]

To Be Sincere

I dreamed you tonight.  It was a mishmash  of interrupted sequences— discovering you, catching hold,  then distance again.  I woke up regretful.  I’ve grown tired of my own  non sequiturs  and one-line jokes.  I want only to be sincere.  And I’ve been feeling like  I have no place  where I can do that.  Now I realize it was you;  you were my place  to be sincere.  I should have let you come  last winter.