eulogy

the apology 
of burning love into the wind
& watching it come and go
in the wind / scattered like seeds
of a thousand men in a thousand still lonely
beds 

for writing eulogies 
for the not quite dead / faces identify
that the mouth, in a sort of half
movement says i am here and eyes
are not the same / to not take responsibility 

for that long long ride 
where no one heard me screaming joy in pillows and cold
or saw my skin like electricity 
shooting sparks into everything it touched
until i reached phone calls & lost 

that sensation of infinity we are still
looking after the fact & still writing the shortest
most direct of letters to jasmine &
losing every inch of memory of gas station newspapers

& how my brother, in play, once hit me

& i
laughed / unaware that one day we'd be 2000 miles apart

& i would not mourn it
ever. now i am not apologizing only to myself only to myself

so stop i tell the head as it moves 
like the thousands of trains stampeding thru
my small life that fit into a box & 
a bruce springsteen lyric. 

© 2003 a.k.