Minute Hand

My triumph as a child
was to watch the clock
and catch the minute hand
moving.

Because I believed
that time appeared
on the clock face
only when we glanced at it.

I would stare
at the clock
to watch the movement
of the big hand

feeling, when I caught it
that I had trapped time itself
as it fled from me.
These days

I no longer watch
the minute hand
my heart no longer interested
in watching time escape.

The Last Round

i guess we're done
because you haven't replied
to my last message

just as well.
we're done and
well done at that.

the cliche which keeps
buzzing my head
is two fighters

in the last round
tired, one's nose
bloody, the other

with a split lip,
sheen of sweat
covering them both

like a halo, their legs
so weary they wobble
through the last

minute of the fight
hanging on to each other
trying to land a final punch

waltzing around the ring
like a pair of lovers
weary of sex.

Three Wishes

Take a torch to me,
Burn me clean
I have a taste for ashes.
Anything can fill emptiness.

Oh, come now,
God says sighing.
You knew about this game
When you ante’d up.

And the third wish
Keep to yourself
For that delicious
Moment of grace and doubt.

Debris

Sometime in the night
over a dark ocean
my heart went missing,
the last signals
incomprehensible.

In the morning
on the back of the blank water
debris:
a torn love seat
a symphony program
a blanket from our bed.

And all along the horizon
a long trail
of oil and tears
and heart’s blood.

When I Last Saw Myself

I was wearing one of those wide
ties, garish colors, and under
my yellow dress shirt I wore
a t-shirt with a logo on it--

I think it said, "Downey
is for Lovers," but it could
have been something else.
I looked pretty fat then,

like a seal emerging from
the brackish waters of a heavily
used harbor, nosing my way
through the oil-slickened surface

for small fish floating around the top.
I was saying something erudite,
probably expounding on the rain
levels this time of year when drought

was just around the corner, or perhaps
it had something to do with Emily
Dickensen--it's pretty hard to recall
at this end of time what occupied my mind

in those days. I was speaking to
a red-haired girl and we fed each other
kiwi at a party, in the other room
loud music by loud musicians and I

waited my turn to hit the electric bass.
Here I am, now, suddenly
almost twenty years older, that girl
now living somewhere else--I see her

when I pick up my boy for my weekly
dose of fatherhood. I wonder now
where that fat guy who knew so much
happened to wander off to.

I have so many questions to ask him.

This Is To Say

when you see me next
and I seem insubstantial
parts of me incandescent
translucent
it is just because
when the heart hollows
the body loses its grasp
on what’s left of ruin

spiderman

the boy jumps
on the couch
as Japanese anime
flickers from the television

on the wall behind him
spiderman leaps
from building to building
flat as a dream

no one else
near the boy
as I walk by
ten at night

wondering to myself