You eat peanut butter with a spoon for breakfast
The dreams you had last night were cruel
And the delirium blackens, the ridges of memory
Are like Braille you trace with your fingers, but can’t seem to spell out.
Monks hunched over in the scriptorium in your head,
Scribbling some parcel of praise for the not inconsiderable.
But you’re afraid you’ll think of her continuously
For twenty years now that the dreams have brought
Her back. You can’t fathom the sounding line in the
Liquid obscurity. Other people have such
Interesting things to say, but you don’t care, it
Seems so meaningless unaccompanied by pain.
[+]
Absence
You read the same page of a novel
twelve times; his favorite book, you can’t
bear to finish it anymore. The birch
trees line the road, night-blackened
but shining like husks of dying phosphorus
in the headlights. You
talk of giants, oceans, stars, nothing
but our own blood will make the dead speak,
and nothing can violate this sorrow, so
terribly have we been joined.
The wipers flick hail-stones onto the road...
There are unsayable things between us; that
we have been left alone. The smell
of hayfires and the sea. The dark ruin
in our loins. When a child goes
we have only each other.
This is the kind of grief that makes you whole.
[+]
Matthew Gasda is a poet living in NYC.
He is currently trying to raise money for his first book through Kickstarter.
