from the pillow book, my edit.

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the mountains, their edges are burnished red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.

In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, when countless fireflies mingle in flight. Even the appearance of one or two charms the eye. Rainy nights even too, how beautiful are they!

In autumn the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edges of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; while more charmings still is a line of wild geese, flying far overhead, tiny in the distant sky. And after the sun has set, the heart is moved immeasurably too by the crying of insects and the sound of the wind.

In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is simply white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and there is a flurry of activity to stir up the fire and bring heat to the rooms in which we live.

afraiding

at home tonight
my roommate's music comes through the floor
bjork sings and I remember the day
the wash of the streets I saw after the rain
the friends in cafes and at work
I feel my body relax and tighten
and tighten and relax
wanting just something intensely
yet also needing not to want
I think of you and wonder
why I so feel pulled still
into desire and longing
to touch your body again.
I won't send this poem
for fear of afraiding you
fraying the tenuous
flights we've flown.

dragonfly (memory)

there was a car
(i feel tears welling)
there were leaves swirling around
(i remember her sitting)
we drove everywhere

and now
in one swiftness
of memory moments

(because of the car,
I saw the car first)

i am
there again
time-traveling

bewildered

unsure of
time
place mood

and
out
of
my mind

in love.

untitled

I've started to hope
that I might one day
read the poem you would write
when you were a poet.

How would it go?
I know
by virtue of not
by unknowing
that you might
be like me, where
your poems so numerous
would circle each other,
biting heels
nipping at fur,
teasing roughly
almost to violence,
where the truth
or its idea
or shadow
takes a different shape
at every measure.

I'd like to know;
does love suffuse
you too?

treasure

that which I came across
without knowing for what I sought.
that which holds a power all its own
over my most private self.
that which is rarer than gold.
which you cannot touch.
looks like love but lasts longer
and amounts to love but greater
for more for many more
for those you don't know
for others for the others
for any other.
what
treasure
is this.
opening in the words of a child
awed at the possibility and surety
of not having of loss and of hope
and everything we strive
to gain to lose
to break free of.

waypoints

you were the safest place I've been
and I could sleep sheltered in your arms,
but now that I've left
I want to learn how to sleep
on my own. I've never could.
Let me close my eyes
in a moment full of peace
full of love.

jkh

locked

it seems my freedom is locked away
my love languishing in memory's clink
clink of shackles and
manacles of a prison invisible
but still all too real

at night in dreams I feel it escape
call it momentary holy flight
call it seeing, call it prescience
I see one possible future in glimpses
of wide open fields and sweat
and the smell of intention
i see another in unknown persons
lurid, secret, aroused.

understanding insanity does little for prevention
but freedom can be put to use.

"How it happened (primary rendition)"

A man walks into a room. Do I interrogate him or allow him to speak? Does he come into my heart or arise out of it. Have I already forgotten him? And his sadness, which has no voice. Because he is a real man. It is a real room, with real walls and terrible limits; those of the world in which he and you and I live. He cannot speak of his fear, for shame, for fear of seeming self-centered, a charity case, people look to him; he must save face.

I have no voice with which to tell you these things that have happened to me. You see, I know that I have been blessed with an oddity of vision- born out of my unlikely childhood and subsequent life of lies. I really doubt that I could tell the story with enough inherent truth to get the point across. Deep down I really don’t believe there is a point. It’s just my life, which doesn’t really amount to much as lightly as I seem to tread across it. The skiff I ride upon drafts lightly in the waves, and I tend to think that way is best.

She was not the girl I had picked, I’ll start right there. And yeah sure, I know there are a lot of cute couples out there where the woman might love to tell the story of how, she just knew that he was the one and sure he thought he was the greatest thing since the electric toaster but that she just kept at it and wore that pale green summer dress of the airiest shape and material and then all of sudden they’re dancing and it’s a done deal. And I like that story believe you me, but it wasn’t like that. She didn’t pick me either. We just sort of both got lucky for a while and maybe changed each other for the better. Well, sure, I might not look like I’m doing so good right now but I really do believe that I was headed for a reckoning anyways so I am glad to have been in her hands at the time.

How did it happen? I already told one story about you know, this and that happening. Sure, we’re all grownups and sometimes its just different and you’re like a hound-dog on a scent and all that, and sure we got to that point maybe. But this was special, neither of us knew what to think of the other. We were like foreign objects to each other. And what exactly that means I couldn’t tell you, but it was like I had to circle her and her me, and we had to look at each other from all angles, and hold up a mirror so we could see both of us each other at the same time, and when I first saw her in a photograph I’d taken, she was so beautiful I wanted to cry. And I wanted to hold her all the time. All I wanted to do was hold her tight.

So we moved in together, like it was the simplest thing in the world. I felt like I was growing up, finally moving beyond the tedium of my daily friends and their repetitive and circular conversations, jokes which made no sense if you hadn’t been present the day before, and that would go unexplained as a subtle jab at your loyalties. But maybe that was part of my problem too, just thinking I was better than that, instead of bringing something real to the table myself.

We got an apartment in wooded part of the city where people lived unmolested by police and high rents, a sort of don’t ask don’t tell block where nods were the farthest any conversation really went. And we bought things, a couch, a table (oh that was a beautiful little table), some pans, and we thought, we’ll do it on the cheap and quick and we’ll make it better as we go. And we did for a while, and sure sometimes your best efforts don’t quite make it all better. Like with the carpet, and that terrible linger of cigarette smoke and pet and innumerable tenants before us, which I used a whole box of that powder stuff you dump everywhere and vaccuum up, but which didn’t quite work, but I really loved the girl still you see. I guess I still do too, but it doesn’t matter, because it just didn’t work right.

And we both saw that hole in the wall that had been patched or I did and it filtered through my consciousness to her, because one night we were lying in bed and from the belt of trees on the steep hillside we could see and hear the moving lights of cars from the freeway far below, and she turned to me and put her slender arms around me and said, this scares me sometimes, being here in this apartment. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t like to be here alone. Maybe that was when I mentioned the patched hole and what I thought it meant, and why did we both take note of this, but when we signed the lease the landlady had casually pulled out photocopies of the driver’s licenses of the previous tenants, shaking her head in fierce dissappointment as she stowed their mismatched faces away in a folder, message clear: don’t be like these bad kids who didn’t work out, as tenants or as lovers, and who failed me first and not to mention each other. So, we were scared of violence I guess from the beginning, and the mystery of each other.

So then later I find myself with my fist in the wall up to the elbow right through that goddamn patch and I feel as ordained as a saint following an angel to the fire. And god bless her for loving me still, but she didn’t call me on it really, and now I can’t calm down and tell you it was because she knew she was stuck and that it would take money to get away and there is none and besides that there’s no time when you have school and work and sleep to do, and I was still pretty grand most of the time, and besides of course I really did love her. But I why did I punch that hole in the wall, why did I screw around with other women when I was with her? That’s the same question. I can’t tell you. I can tell you she got away eventually, safe and I’m happier for that than any other thing, and that I’m in treatment now, and I can’t talk to her and if she walks into a restaurant or out of the bathroom say, while I’m taking a bite of a burrito, I gotta go without thinking, ignore the burning pounding in my chest the bile rising from my stomach the way my head pounds for hours after those seconds of involuntary asphyxiation, ignore everything that reminds me of where I held her love in my heart and body, how she felt in my arms and the sweetest way she sang to pass the time her lips pursed in thought her voice warm and roughened with desire, all that was there when I really did love her more than my shame and anger and whatever else idiocy kept me from really loving her, and not a peep and no phone calls and no emails or you’re getting picked up and everything you’ve worked for is erased, and don’t think about her too much, she’s gone you see.

like the addict doctor from tv

when I saw the fear and concern
on your face
as I started to lose--
my mind, I still thought I was smarter,
fought back against what I saw
as an accusation of my guilt.
I feel it even now,
a tightening and a clutching
a scrabbling of fingernails
as if I were in a horror movie
when the protagonist must
dig through the shallow loam
and dead leaves covering
his or her lost child.
Why can I not be
one of those who sees
their own truth so easily?
I'm just like the addict doctor on tv.
Or at least I like to think I am
because, he is smart enough
that people still like him despite his deformities,
of which he is able to keep from knowing too much.

a poem to kick it off

I follow my emotions down with inquiries
asking questions of them
shouting interrogatories
even as each one fades
like stones sinking into wells
or deep lakes.
What is beauty's emoting?
How do I cross the bridge,
to leave dramatics
histrionic fits crying deep
sadness behind?, to non
attaching behavior, appropriate
levels of grief sanctioned public displays
correct and lawful behavior

yet still believe in love
still believe
in beauty again,
and goodness and truth.

I know there is a way out of nihilism
but it sometimes feels like a ray of light
a pinprick of light leading the only way out

of a measureless cavernous black hole.