The State of the Union

We go up and down, but more often
back and forth. I'm usually forth, and you're back. The going.
I look back but don't go back. You go back. I go forth. We
pick up where we left off. We pick up the thread. The thread is
red. The thread is frayed. We tease it apart. Its a tease. Its a
part of us both. It teases us. I pick it apart. You pick it up.
Sometimes it makes us a little frayed. Then we
smooth it over, and pick up where we left off. For better or worse.
I'm getting better. I'm not as up and down. I'm
less frayed. Sometimes that makes me feel worse. Sometimes you're
worse, or better. I go
back and forth on which it is. You're
a smoothie, or you're a tease, or you're right, its better this way. Its
neither here nor there, in the end. You're there and I'm here.
We're both for better and for worse. Overall, its better. It could be worse.
It would be worse if
it was the end.

Haunted

Without

That Was Us

Wrecked and Yellow

Intent

Sconsolato

It is nothing, I reply, when
thanked for donating you money, or
making you a dinner, or when

asked what true cost the
endurance of all this is. A red bird

crosses my path, shoots like a
dropping bullet of death across my path
down, then down, then down

if I were a bird, or if I continue on
in this fashion
you will never see me like a ground bird, a thrush, a towhee
kicking leaves, making a racket, in the underbrush

if either is true I will be found to
lay across the limbs of trees, up in the trees,
limb to limb, bone to bone, awkwardly,
and embarrasedly, and you'll be pained, but where a red bird
can be free to
shoot his looping call, his deathly flight path,

all over my continued persistence to
speak nothing of myself, the obvious, the death path
and much less you.