Commencement speeches I wish I heard. 

I hate you loving your girlfriend

I hate your chin

I dislike your hair any other way

But very very short

I am not fond of your English

I hate your Facebook updates

About you loving your girlfriend

So I

Will keep on reading them.

But I am very honest

When I say I wouldn’t trade places

With her

Someone tie me to the end of a kite and send me his way. Into his strong, rough hands, hands that remember everything from a young girl’s hips to cold and cruel steel. Someone please allow me another look into those blue eyes. Someone please send me with the Easterly winds and let me finish what we started. 

We have tigers to catch still, I think, in each other, tigers. 

Tu me manques. Really really. 

I’m howling now

Like mad dogs at the moon

I am ripping with my teeth

At the first thing in my way

And claw marks

On your back

Are now claw marks

Everywhere.

Hunt me down

Tie me down

And tell me now

Who won and who forgot

And let me howl,

Howl away. 

Tanning my biceps, thinking about how much ass I am going to kick in the fall. 

I will take some time, sometime, to travel for a bit. And I will send postcards to someone worthy of them. There are a few I def want to mail out:

“Rule #1: Regret nothing”

“Rule #2: Keep a good head on your shoulders”

“Rule #3: Make your own rules”

“I have a bowl of fearios every time I pee on a pregnancy test.”

“Got married yesterday. Woke up today feeling a bit weird.”

“I am sorry I never say ‘Wish you were here’”

There is a certain sadness for me, here, in Florida. I wake up to someone screaming just outside my doors, which do not close. Every morning I wake up. 

I eat something tasteless, more or less. There is a certain hopelessness in my mother. 

I go on the porch where the branches are overtaking the lanai and I listen to the birds sing. All sorts of birds, all sorts of songs, woodpeckers, even. 

I sit there with my laptop open and I force myself to do some sort of work. I listen to music. I go to the gym when it is time to go. I drink coffee and Gatorate and local citrus juices. I take off my clothes and tan when the sun is out. 

But there is certain sadness and heaviness in all I do, on the outside. On the inside I am crumbling and boiling and burning, and breaking and rebuilding. 

I am alone here. Marinating in something entirely artificial. Everything I do is not out of necessity, but rather to appear as if I have something to do.

And I know it’s all a matter of shaking this off me. I think. 

Be gentle to me

I tell myself,

Because everything is as it should be

And when one bad man breaks your heart

Another good man

Is thinking of you,

I tell myself.

Don’t be bitter I tell myself,

As I swallow back tears:

There are things outside you,

Like traffic and lines

Taxes and weather and manners

And kindness of strangers and spoiled

New shoes,

And all kinds of bombs.

Some break into shrapnel

Like fireworks

And sink deep.

Some hearts are deeper than oceans

And no more known.

Be gentle to you,

I tell myself

And the mirrors keep hinting

At another pair of shoulders

Next to mine.

But these are just buildings

Built shiny and plastic and new

On busy streets

And people rarely look at themselves

Reflected in such monstrosity

For fear of being eaten whole

Or maybe for fear of being reminded

That they already are.

Be gentle to me,

I start over again

And it’s generally too early in the day

For poems like these. 

I spilled a bottle of ink

And it ran

In streams, on the floor

There were swans on the lake

That turned into tigers

And sank.

The trees pinched the moon at the sides

And swallowed her whole.

And the walkers hunched down and crawled

Only to lie close to each other

Fighting for air.

I saw you as well,

I saw that in myself.

The lines got sharper and twisted

Into wrinkles of time.

Two dreams flew on neighboring clouds,

Rains became snow and the weatherman cried

After something he saw in the sky.

And I thought,

This black trace will be all

I am leaving behind.

Your apartment building

Stands in a courtyard:

Across the way is a smoothie joint,

If I can remember.

There is a whole universe in that old little house

And your door stands next to others’ doors

I remember how easily

And carelessly we walked from one small room to the next,

Up and down stairs,

Following the well-dressed man

In a vest.

And how silly I was

And how drunk you were

And how astonished I was

At being astonished

A whirlpool was starting to build in your wineglass,

And a small serving

Of happiness. 

There is a solar eclipse in LA tomorrow

People will drive up there

And probably park on the hills

Drag their lawn chairs out of the trunks

And plant their overgrown asses

So that the seat sinks to the ground

And interrupts some grassdweller’s hop

And their baseball hats

Will cast an unusual shadow

On their life-worn faces.

Once every few decades

The moon swings her hips across the sky

Brighter than the sun

But

I’ll probably be here

With another day lost

Watching the stars,

Wishing I was in LA,

Wishing.