Down Time

She was always busy doing something productive:
cleaning, feeding dogs, watering chickens, improving her home, making beds,
exercising, preparing food, washing, folding, taking care of herself, riding or grooming horses
-all of this when she wasn't working.

I don't do those things. When I'm not working, I'm asleep.
When I'm not asleep, my mind turns things over and over,
And I think of all the things she did.

with the black dog...

Rain-Snow Line

Not until I drove up into the
hill town where I live did the snow come
blinding, heavy and deepening

In the house, I scanned the first few sentences of an article
written by a man of eighty three years living alone now
in his family home with all its history and all its absences.

He characterized solitude as a gentle power
and said sometimes, during the late hours, solitude becomes loneliness.
I didn't read far enough to learn how he characterized that.

I'd call it soft memories with razor edges, or maybe a
silent hungry lion with her gaze fixed on you
waiting for the moment you raise your eyes to hers.

I'm not eighty three, but after six months, I'm almost alright
in this place, in this skin, with this silence, without the rest of all of it,
maybe starting to feel, just faintly, the hum of some gentle power.

Loneliness comes with memory when it enters you too vividly,
from a gentle rain to a swirling, cutting,  heavy squall
you can't see the road through.

It happens when comparing that to this,
when thinking this should be something else.

Three years ago now, a night between Christmas and New Year's began with an unexpected text message at a particularly low moment- an invitation nearly declined. Initially warmed by your humor; then bemused by you under the influence of alcohol; and then you took my arm on the icy sidewalk -look, there he is, already lost in it - and in no time after that, he could not help but kiss your head uninvited, his heart enfolding you like it had always been in love -the warm and growing hum of a gentle power.

And now, feeling this, comes the snow
blinding, heavy, deepening.

When comparing that to this,
solitude becomes loneliness.

When thinking this should be something else,
soft memories slice an artery imperceptibly
seeing the blood, you raise your eyes in surprise
and then the lioness.

All Around It Was Dark

The anxiety leading up to this day, Christmas, has now abated.  Though soon enough I'll find something else to worry about.

Christmas Eve. I had a German lunch in a Polish immigrant town and thanked the waitress for working Christmas Eve so that the likes of me had a place to be for an hour. She was about 30, maybe a little younger, well-pregnant with her second. She said the last time her job gave her a stool to sit on sometimes, but not here,  and all the standing is rough on her back. Another woman enters and sits at the bar with a friend she has come to meet. Maybe my age, very pretty. Our eyes kept meeting, but I could not be sure if I was welcome or intruding. They were warm and brown and somehow made me feel sadder and infected. When I stood to leave, I said goodbye to Kate, the waitress, shook hands with her and wished her well, while the beautiful woman at the bar held my eyes steadily this time and wished me Merry Christmas. I stood there for a few seconds wondering if I should talk to her or if she was only offering pity to a man alone on Christmas Eve and then left believing the later to be the case.

I crossed the Connecticut River- flowing water, ice and rock, red brick buildings.

Driving home tonight, I saw the brightly lit side of a peeling white chicken house. All around it was dark. It triggered memories of other lonely sites I wish I'd  photographed and catalogued as if they were significant and one day their significance would be made known to me. 

What You Said Stayed With Me

Leaving was hard, you said
But staying was hard too.

Staying with me was hard for you.

I heard you
And understood with a stab
That I had become an obstacle

Between you and your happiness,
Between you and your dream,
Between you and your desire,
Between you and your goal,
Between you and your truth,
Between you and your destiny,
Between you and your true love.

A waste of your time, energy, feeling, spirit...

Without me now
You are free.

And I no longer have to feel that
This time, separated from you,
Is wasted time.

Just An Old Fashioned

It's closer to an an occupation
than a crossing of your mind so
you've long wondered whether
you've exceeded the limits of normalcy with this
but your precious lament isn't special at all
just one more of a few dozen billion
versions of the second oldest
song there is

Shoveling snow for the first time each winter is a gauge of many measures.

Zero And Only The Rumble Of The Furnace

Temperature at zero.

Cold nights like this
make me remember you here,
both of us warm, close, quiet, happy.

Something radiated from the center of me out to you.
I think of it as holiness.
Did you receive it?

Awake And Waiting For The Alarm

Now I'm the one sleepless
Seems like the moon is always full
These days, and staring at me,
Or nothing but a sliver
Seemingly running out of itself.

I almost sent a message having to do with loss
Why mine is more acute than yours
But then I thought better of it
Knowing one will never really know the other's

Sixteen hours of work in front of me
Too broke to eat, unless there's space on a card,
Reducing it to basics
Fight to keep your job, work to care for your
Children, pay debt to get out from under,
Try to avoid disintegration.

Good morning, world.

Sucks The Air Right Out Of The Room

When you start hoping
Remember this
The only reason she isn't with you is
She doesn't want you.

The flowers that once were in bloom? Shadows.

Now My Heart Asks Yours

I ask you frankly
why are we wasting this time
with the wick of the world burning down
while this love still exists between us?

There is no other time than this for us.

Counting For The Sake of Counting

At five months
A check in
Not much is different
Haven't started hoping
But it was good to reaffirm it
To dispel resentment and bitterness
A little bit

Then you might as well take the sun away...

Autumn Leaves

Raining now and too warm
for the last day of Autumn
at least the way I view the calendar
in four equal three month seasons
which is pretty much how it goes down
here in New England but it's
still warm enough now for moths
to collect around the outside light
and a lone and hardy mosquito
cruised me a couple of days ago too
meanwhile the South is dry and burning
while the President isn't at all presidential
and the world, from this vantage,
seems to have suddenly tilted sharply
like the stern of the Titanic high in the air
as the bow plunges asunder.

Some will say this is necessary,
even part of the plan, while I,
myself, have no idea.

Image

A heavy anchor on a very long chain
The links of the chain are small
Bolt cutters would do the trick
Do you realize that?

The One Left...

Not Much Has Changed

Morning fog and too warm for the season
Got out of work late last night
That familiar hollow buzz signaling the need for sleep
Rain and fog and the sound of a distant train horn
The one that used to make me feel saintly
Broke, hungry, thin and going without
Walking through night, fog, stiff wind
Some unrequited love weighing on me
Generally compressed, not crushed flat
Walking

I have a car these days, no longer thin, still broke,
Closer to flat

She Said I'd Lost My Brilliance

Thanksgiving morning
I'm hungry for peanut butter and raspberry jam toast
The squirrels are ransacking the bird feeder
For whatever remains of the black sunflower seeds
I slept in this morning and, waking, felt less bad
The tank is half full of heating oil, and the place is warm
I'm going to see family today,  bringing eggnog and red wine

Thought about plugging in the string of Christmas lights
Hung there to make this place a little less stark for her
Back when she used to come here, and to make the joy
And warm magic visible, but looking at them now
Kind of stabbed me so I just let them go on sleeping
Keeping their secret 

Dark Spanish Symphony

Well Meant

If asked, I would tell someone else that he or she is already doing all that is required - taking regular forward steps, doing ordinary things, living the life that's right in front of one. It doesn't matter if one does it alone or with other people. Just keep going like that. Keep going, and what's now distant will become close, and what's now close will become distant. In this way, we get over it.

I would hope the other person wouldn't ask about that chasm inside with pain around its edges, about what to fill it with or if it ever goes away.

Location

Taiwan, China, San Diego...
Was that you?
I'm pretending now that it was.

I want to see your eyes
To feel your heart again
To share my love with you

Through this sad world

I Don't Like Tuesday Either

The moon woke me at 3 AM bright enough to cast shadows. I read a text message from someone who said that all her psychiatric patients were trying to hook up. The moon means romance to many. I stood in the sliding door, looking out, wondering who you were underneath it with now, sick within. I did the loving kindness meditation, for us both, but there was no getting back to sleep.

Another Moon Story

There was an historic appearance of the moon last night. She was closer to us and brighter than she will be for a long time to come. I would have shown it to her as it rose over the trees and felt that deep satisfaction I used to feel, like I'd given her a gift that really meant something and she understood its significance. 

Religious Observance

A few Lazarus hours spent
with the light and new air hurting you,
lying there sleepless, ashamed of your body,
brought a kind of pleasure, but remotely,
feeling less of it from a greater distance
without the flying of your heart
ashamed for breaking the vigil,
for drawing breath, but your life
should be used for more than marking
the grave of something once beautiful.

You tell yourself this then
slow motion wriggle your body
partially free of rigor mortis,
assisted by rum warm in your throat,
into something resembling dancing.

She kindly doesn't, but the mirror judges
you.

I hope the Lover in you has found now its Beloved.

Fleeting

A heavy footed dancer
Santeria priestess
Her head is out the window
At two o'clock in the morning

One hundred charms of protection
Action figures covered in ash
Cigar stubs burning slowly
Sharp featured Indio

Don't forget to vote, she tells him
Then, later, on the highway
A shooting star, a flying arrow
Shows him the way East

Answer if you can...

Won't Somebody Tell Me

He's almost careless now
fresh from the warm embrace
of a whiskey drink
caught talking to himself
by a young couple on their way in.

It's much warmer tonight
than seasonal, and he's slit a little
by the scimitar edge
of the waxing moon and
starts bleeding some

Coping with four situations
that put him in the high risk for suicide category
all at once, he flips the bird at the golden
glow of the sword's edge remembering
the brown waitress and his
own natural time winding down knowing
that Death takes good care of itself already

Drives himself home with Tom Waits on the radio
for a few minutes asking about the soul of a man,
speculating that a man ain't nothing but his mind,
covering Blind Willy Somebody.

Pulling into the drive way
he hopes to see her car there
remembers what that felt like
smells the fallen leaves in the
warm autumn night air

Ventral

Overheard part of a conversation while waking. Someone inside said, just find another girl. The result was a physical sensation along the entire length of the ventral side of my body - a queasy internal sunburn. I felt it when I saw the impression your body left in the leaves and grass, now an empty space in my mind's eye.

A Modest Ambition

Took a nap after pouring seed into the bird feeder because my bed was more inviting than the afternoon. Most of the leaves are down with frost at night and today unable to climb out of the 40s. Kind of like where I'm at. Waking up, I thought I need to get to work on cultivating small-j joy in my life. A modest ambition. I laid there thinking about that until it got dark. 

If only it was easy...

Waking Up

The first morning thoughts
arrive consistently now
baring claws and fangs
points and edges.

Angst

The night before last, I dreamed a building collapsed
in slow motion, there were no walls, so I could see the people
pancaked and folded under the rubble.

When the scene settled, there was no movement
no help, only me

We Kill The Flame...

In OrderTo Move Forward, You Must First Witness The Execution Of Your Tenacious Hopes

Mistakes were made is what my boy would say
Maybe it's better to wonder than to know
In knowing, I am lower down now...

I sent a probe - something told me forward the photos
taken with trembling hands in bad light of
her meeting the puppy you picked up at the airport for
the first time. It was March and cold, and the puppy was
shivering in her hands so she placed it on her breast
and zipped the puppy inside her coat thereby demonstrating a capacity for love.
The puppy was happy, and the girl was happy, and the moment was perfect.

You were happy too, a spastic photographer
attempting to document the moment love occurs.

She acknowledged receipt of the photos with a
generic single word response followed by an exclamation point
thereby demonstrating a capacity for deflection,
for letting you down easy by not saying more,
for letting go, and for moving on.

In knowing, I am lower down now
Maybe it is better to wonder than to know
Mistakes were made, that's what my boy would say...

Fools in Love

Flat

I woke thinking anxious thoughts about her
And opened my eyes to that leveled desolation
Again

A grieving person recently observed
That it's not being alone that hurts
It's being without the loved one
They look like the same thing,
But they aren't.

Hunter's Moon

Another Super Moon
Full and bright enough to read by
Watched it rise with my boy
Later on the drive home
Illuminating the antlers, head, and powerful neck
Of a big whitetail buck
Standing in the trees
Our eyes locking for a moment

Taking Stock

Preliminary discussion about
readiness for dating. She suggested
the litmus test would be how many
times a week you think about her.
How many times? Yes, like how
many days a week she enters
your thoughts...

Ok then, maybe
you should be starting with
trying to identify an hour a day
when she doesn't? 

I would not think of such things if I could, if I could help myself...

What's Left Of A Hurricane

Slept with the slider open
crickets faded into rain
rain sound kept me sleeping
alone, I make relationships
with things like the sound of crickets and rain
like you did as a beautiful child
with that bird sleeping in your hair.

It's not bad living this way
until, waking, my mind remembers
and makes the comparison.

Medicine Wheel

Sick and angry people here, the election, the poor choices

Apathy or ignorance - there seems so far to go.

Losing friends with political talk.

I've been hoping for evidence 

of visitation from the other side of the world

but it hasn't been forthcoming, beyond the first two,

which inspired in me a hope that she is checking

from far away, still connected.

Hope again,
that shitheel.

Meanwhile, from yet another part of the world

A calm voice tells me to choose love over fear

I should listen to that voice.

It's raining today...

But Who's Counting?

Three months. A full season now.
Being stable and mature here, like I said
I would, a seeping wound beneath the wisdom
of my years, living up to expectations,
taking care of business, hanging in the closet.

Wind Moving Ghosts

Rain tonight, dark and cold
the wind through the trees
stripping leaves a few at a time
stripping time

This is the kind of night
where the 3 AM sounds might have been you
walking through my front door, standing at the foot of the bed
home coming, breaking up, never explaining,
but laying beside me until morning.

It's hope that
keeps me living
in this ghost world.

September, Nearly Over

Fall morning breaking
Yellow leaves blowing, some of them falling, all of them knowing
Blue Jay is staying, but he's dreaming about going

Close the window against the invading coldish breeze
here to dislodge Summer's last frail soldier
stirring the chimes as it proceeds

The delicate sound prompts a glimpse of you,
All this feeling in just a note or two.

I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues...

You're a woman in a yellow dress surrounded by a charm of hummingbirds...

Checking my phone

Leaving a job and turning in my first real smart phone with built in camera. With that comes the anxiety of what to keep and what to delete. Thumbing through pictures of my kids that exist there and nowhere else; wondering if I should go through the trouble of transferring my number to the lesser phone I will end up purchasing; scrolling through the contacts; voice mail.


I found two you left for me some time ago and thought a long time about whether or not to listen before I finally did. In the first, you called me babe so naturally that it hurt to hear. The message was more than a year old, and you were leaving detailed, careful instructions about the type of chicken feed you wanted. In the second, you sounded less certain, more distant. You wanted to tell me about some paranormal activity you thought might be going on in your house. Your voice felt to me somewhere between familiar and strange, and the sound of it set in motion a stampede of memory.


I release you.


A month has passed since I made that vow. You are all around me now but not with me. My hands are not holding on, but something is.

Mysteries

Listening to morning becoming afternoon

I receive the message in what I do not hear as part of the fluid truth of our relationship. We have our injuries, both. We continue, limping down solitary paths now.




You're ambivalent in your attachments - thinking yourself, willing yourself, out of this moment through to an idea of something better or higher. Mine are insecure, and I am left to wonder what is wrong with me that you didn't stay, tripping over roots and rocks.




 I read today that, for some of us, loneliness may be programmed in our DNA. For those people, solitude feels like a wound. I say those people because I don't know if it's my DNA that makes me perceive this deep bruise, or if the bruisings have modified my DNA.




The two paths will intersect at a common terminus. When I reach that place, I will think it is a shame we couldn't have traveled here together in warmth, light, tenderness and laughter, our hands held  securely in each other's.

Indiscernable Patterns of Migration

The second week of September and the hummingbirds seem to have moved on. I kept my promise and fed them through the summer, a ritualized attempt to keep my life connected to yours, but it didn't bring you back.




Everyone leaves. This is a well-learned fact, a biological imperative, a part of the natural order which you have come to understand and almost accept. And yet you still lose a piece of yourself, shed blood. You feel depleted of something essential and burdened by a new weight at the same time.




The leaves are turning, it's quiet and cloudy and humid. I'm greyer, hardly wiser, siting alone, in my natural state.

A Painful Tickle

This fruit fly is a sod, but I'm not going to focus on that guy. My king-size bed is a mockery now and I'm thinking about down-sizing, should the funds become available, in order to create more space in my cell. Distill. Get down to the essentials. In the absence of a Queen, even a queen-size mattress seems extravagant. A twin, however, may signify resignation and a surrender I'm not quite ready to offer.




Students with healthy hair and clear eyes. My nipples are sensitive under my performance t-shirt. What's that about? Source of my nurture, my empathy, my special power - three grains left in a leather pouch.




Send a message to a young man who believes that keeping his guns is actually saving his life despite his suicidal thoughts, despite easy access, despite the incessant whispering through the night. It does get dark, you tell him, but don't make it easy for the demon. Unload it. Eject the round from the chamber. Remove each bullet from the magazine. Put on the trigger lock and keep it secured in the gun safe. Put the magazine somewhere else, and the bullets in a third remote location. Make it a multi-step process with time to think, time to reconsider, time to side with your body and your heart that only want to continue, that want to give love. Better yet, store the damn things at a friend's house for safe keeping.




Sometimes we need to be kept. Sometimes we need a keeper.




I still think about you more than I think about anything else. Most days you are featured in the first thought upon waking and the last thought before slipping away. That's some kind of honor, I think. Too bad it doesn't help either of us.


I want to believe in light energy, in reiki, in the ability to send out my love and make things right.

Love will save you...

What to ask when you see it

Ask it who you are and who you're supposed to be,
Confess that you're now in a place where you really just don't know
Ask it to heal everything broken in you
To purge all the darkness from you, most of it -
All that prevents, perverts, punishes
Ask it to show you your way
And, if you manage to get your feet under you,
Ask it about her.

my dream proves I am yet alive...

Stray

Tomorrow I'm scheduled for an interview
A new job, or the prospect of one
The wrong tree

I'd like to just walk and keep walking
For a good long while
Away and away and away

Without guilt or longing, with
No place to leave or to go or to stay

A Month After Turning Fifty

Today marks a full month of absence
You've gathered up the last of her things
She won't like it when you leave them on her porch
You're pretty sure she'll want the fancy pillow back though
You're also pretty sure this is the last time you'll drop anything there

Despite all the practice
It still feels bad
Something very heavy inside your body
Pulling you down

Time to get up

Now I guess her silence is the least of my worries:
there's something to be said for the immediate threat,
for the rest of it going to shit

From inertia to terminal velocity
the earth is rising fast, promising to flatten you against it
stop flailing and can't believing it

And think

Alan Vega in Suicide

Shopper

Mid-July and the first real hot night of the summer. If she was here you'd have brought the air conditioner up from the basement, but you content yourself with the quiet and the drone of the fan. You don't really need much.

Tonight, the super market, two half-gallons of lactose free milk, two chicken breasts, and a box of Devil Dogs. You're singing twenty-nine dollars and an alligator purse. Small children notice walking past. Their heads turn all the way around at you. You unbutton the second button of your shirt and untuck it, feeling half drunk without having drank a drop. In the front of the store,  the two lines are long - 9 pm, Friday night - staffed by two teenaged cashiers who want to be anywhere else.

The faces of the people are vacant, waiting on line for diminishing returns. Your time is running out even faster here, and breathing seems harder. Though you have nothing better to do, you will not spend it this way.

Swearing aloud down the aisle, disproportionally angry, you retrace your steps replacing each item exactly where you picked it up. You are not, after all, on the side of chaos. But you are making a stand for liberty.

You think about what losing a job at fifty means, about not belonging anywhere, and then revisit the thing about not really wanting to stay on the planet at all, but there is this agreement you've agreed to.

"U.S.M.C, motherfucker!" someone in your head laughs, "U Signed the Motherfucking Contract".

You march out of the supermarket, tall and slow, forsaking groceries entirely. The parking lot is darker and bleaker then when you came in.  The sky above features an interesting dark cloud bank that seems a looming mountain range in the fading light. There's a high chunk of bright moon up there too. 

In Every Dream Home A Heartache...

MN

We watched his body slowly tilt
And his eyes roll heavenward,
To where heaven should have been,
While the others there were shooting
Bullets and footage
His crimson tee shirt
His unprevented expiration.

What else besides this man died today?

What else will come to life?

I never ever thought it otherwise...

Sunny Day

When things are good, it's harder to write.
Hesitant to examine it for fear of withering, you try
To be present and not to think, then
To control the thought that maybe
Someone is gradually removing,
In whatever tiny increments,
The air from the room you are
Smiling in.

Questions

But can you write joy? Can you welcome it, invite it in, live with it from one day to the next without locking the door? Can you let joy be what it is without twisting, crushing, or fretting it into something else?

I would like

Date

Change comes suddenly
and from all directions
a body shredded by a blast
and its shrapnel
moved in impossible ways
people bleed and suffer
and cry as much from old wounds
as from new.

You should calm down,
shut the fuck up,
and take care of your yard. 

Warm night and the sound of the fan

San Diego's Greyhound station on Broadway had a small bar in it. At the age of 21, I wanted to stay there with the feeling that I was going somewhere else and absolutely anything could happen. Possibility. Welcoming motion and change. It's time to begin again now. Time to stop reviving ghosts and let them go to where they must. I'm a strange stranger here again, and everything is about to change. 

The Word You Cannot Speak

Unarmed,But,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

A comparison of scars
A measuring of trust
A few grains of sand in your
Medicine bag.

Are we ready to embark on the second
Half of this?
The saddest eyes
Her laughing face

Toward a natural order

Shrouded moon

Drunken man

Hooting owl

Warm, silent night

The mail brought a package

Place the mourning angel
On the sun warmed flat stone
See how it resembles the girl you loved, weeping.

Remember the wise and pretty voice
on the radio talking Confucius.
Overcome your previous self - grow.
Try now to make beauty of this life.

Seasonal

All the recent rain and then a sunny day in the 70s has pushed the grass up. I came home early today to push the mower through it for the first time of the season. I notice in the car mirror my hair has gone mostly silver. This seems new to me and alarming.

I've noticed lilacs blooming this week, and today the first ruby-throated hummingbird appeared at the feeder. This is the third summer they've shown up here, after she invited them. These things, of course, make me think of her. Today, I was able to celebrate my memories of her and hope for her happiness. I sent something out.

The May flies are out already. It's dusk. The cardinals come by. A robin trills. My roommate, a few years older than I, says he doesn't recognize his own face in the mirror. His dog is 14 years old. "I'm all you've got," he says to the dog who mock-snarls back at him.

I'm glad, at least, that you will never feel like a hostage living with me.

Concerned

Losing my religion, went the lyric, and now you understand it differently pissing in a bar's narrow restroom. You should feel good about getting out from under that weight. She would, and probably does. Maybe only you know what's lost.

Things to do

I started feeding the birds again, and I can tell you that suet isn't the best food choice in my tiny corner of the world. The Spring before last we brought a black bear into the backyard with it. Now it's racoons - a duo. Working together, they managed to bend the shepherd's hook all the way to the ground to access the feeders. I saw them both holding bricks of suet in their little hands like sandwiches. They've done the same thing now three nights in a row. Each morning, I bend the hook back to straight, add sunflower seeds to the platform feeder - intended for the cardinals and the blue jays- and finch food to the other feeder -for the gold finches and tufted titmouse - titmice? The squirrels and turkeys get a lot of it, but that's the price you pay, I guess, if you look at it that way. I watched a frenetic little red squirrel for a while this morning.

I'm not putting suet out anymore though. You learn, you modify your practice, but you keep on with what you do.

I've been taking care of the dog's grave, like I said I would. I laid down some soil and planted some grass that's supposed to thrive in shaded areas, even in the woods. I was doing my best to water it twice daily, and starting to enjoy the ritual,  but it's been raining for almost a week now, and I haven't had to. The grass is coming up nicely. I'm thinking of planting winter berry holly there too, or American bittersweet - try to create some Eastern bluebird habitat. And maybe lilacs. I'll make his grave into a shrine for everything, the whole episode.

You know, I don't really know shit about native birds or plants, but I'm doing things with this time. Just waiting, hoping, feeling pain, remembering everything all the time was depleting me.

You've got to take an interest in life. Tonight I went for a run and bought some all purpose cleaner at Walmart.

I am practicing substitution. Methadone maintenance. I don't get high, but I don't get sick either. And that is some relief.

I know you and I didn't have twenty years, or even ten, but we could have had tonight and last night and the one before. It's four weeks ago this morning that I last woke up beside you, felt you, saw you. 

The Miracle of Love...

The Difference Between You and Me (half baked)

Resilience has something to do with going from a good place to a bad place then finding a way to forget, integrate or wall off the experience and move on to a new good place. Going from a good place to a bad place and learning how to live in the rubble with the damage is called endurance.

She is not

It hurts to wait for her, and yet you find yourself still waiting, even though one of the narratives you're working on says you are learning how to let her go. The second narrative says your heart is a dog waiting in the window, certain that his owner will return any minute now, because doubt is not in the nature of a dog.

You text her after a few weeks of being careful not to initiate any contact. It sets you all the way back. Then you respond to her brief answer, and now you wait for more, and then hurt when it is not forthcoming. Maybe this is practice, how your heart comes to learn.

She is not love.
She is a woman, a human being, hungry and lost like all the others.
She is not your love.
Your love is your own, right here, to be given as you wish.
She is not your heart.
Your heart is your own slippery burden,

An Ordinary Messenger Arrives Dressed in Bright Colors

The sunflower seeds brought in a new guest this morning -
A purple finch, I think.
I looked for you, but you weren't there.
It was wonderful even so,  I didn't need you to see that,
But it wasn't magical.

It's the same as being sick, really - this thing I have for you.
In time you recover
Or you die.

Gentle Night

Home before dark for a change, just after a warm Spring rain
watching the day wind down, listening to water dripping, bird sounds.

A  tufted titmouse couple at the feeder, replenished finally, with sunflower seeds -
she called them "whimsical" then, and I nearly died of love,
but they exist here without her now, independent of her, and so must I.

Just before dark a mating pair of cardinals appear on the platform together,
eating at the same time, and twice they appear to kiss.

I let the darkness come in gently, and can do nothing to stop it.

Happiness does not wait...

Trajectory

The moon tonight rose full, round, orange and warm over the hilltop. The next time I caught a glimpse it was higher, silver, colder, remote. You coming into, and going out of, my life. Everything's going to hurt for awhile yet.

Instead of working out

A burger and a beer is too much too ask apparently without two or three relentless human voices far above normal conversational volume beating at my ear drums. Hyena laughter, some kind of programmed response, madness.  The two bar tenders are like a married couple out of synch, interesting to watch, and most of the patrons aren't happy with the chemistry either. Watch the hostess for a moment, she's very cute and young, and when she says goodnight it is in that manner of a young woman addressing an old man. You are no potential ravager in her view. A couple comes in as you leave. The male thanks you, Sir, for holding the door open for them - a kind of protest, a salutation to young love, a mournful howl into the night.

Outside the big moon glows brightly.  It's the blue hour, silhouettes of budding trees, and a black crow flies across her silver face. 

Marathon

Sleeping in after working all night - a family fight,  the second heroin overdose in a day, auditory hallucinations, a man who pierced an artery in jail. Sleep came easily after, at 4:30 AM, but it's a bright Spring day, and I could neither stay asleep or rise feeling good and participate in it. She's in a large crowd today with a new friend, I think, supporting the runners. That hurts me more than it should. Half dreaming, I receive a text message in my head in which she said my name and that she was feeling happier already.

Don't do that to yourself.
It's important not to stay here.
Don't get stuck in this place - stomach dropping, hollowed out core.

You're free now. Even if you don't know where you are or where to go from wherever this is.
When in doubt, go forward - take the next step. You know this.

Whatever you decide, you must run your own race. And you must let her run hers.

No Cure For The Lonely

A Necessary Procedure

If you're reading this, please take the alabaster heart and bury it
In the Spring-softened ground under the lilac bushes where you live.
It's a good place for it to rest.

My gift was your burden, I never even asked you if you wanted it.
But know it was given in hope, honestly, but too heavy a thing - sorry.
What I meant to say was if you...then I would...always

My New Sun, not only my heart knew,  but even the translator told me so.
You couldn't cure loneliness, but I felt you shine, and you made me forget
Through that long beautiful day when you moved across my sky.

Now, I remember.  Your last message sent and received, read and re-read,
A confirmation of fears, a clinical incision but no surprise, you've been bracing me for this day.
Now I must find some new way to breathe, learn to write about something else.

That which restored me, pumped life through me, now joins the line of things trying to kill me.
Waking from surgery, empty room, new scars, the pain of absence and
At least some percent chance of a partial recovery.

Step

I'm part now of the expanding distance. 

The Rite Of Spring

What do you think you're doing?

Tried to go to bed early as part of re-establishing a routine
but sleep isn't really there (like someone we know).

You find yourself living in a squalid room - peeling paint,
unserviceable appliances, no heat, no air, brown water, toilet can't flush,
roaches and rats skittering and tip-tapping all night while you listen
blanket pulled up to your lips seething with rage and disgust
frozen in fear and disbelief until you're mobilized and
you climb flights and flights to the landlord's apartment
up on the top floor armed with a claw hammer you pound
and pound until the door swings open and you find yourself
staring hard into your own eyes which stare hard right back.

The problem with all of this is what?
The blame for all of this falls where?
The solution to all of this comes from whom?

Right?
I know but, right now I have to keep on
doing what I keep on doing until I'm done doing it.

Occupation

The crows this morning plan and execute,
it's a military movement,
their communication, entirely tactical,
they bound and overwatch, always advancing
setting themselves up as the occupying force
in the woodlot behind this house.

They meet no resistance
just me, awakened from an anxious dream,
trying to stay asleep
a little after sunrise,
with the work week bearing down

Rebound

Will this, one day, look like just another chapter?
Not as final or as fatal as it now appears
Is this perfectly predictable?
An expected stage along the path to stasis

You like the invisible god in things
That mysterious power is your meaning
You don't want to see it written out,
Or hear it explained,
Or to know if there is a map

If you lose control of your self (you give it to somebody else)...

Something about what we're hungry for

On the stage where you posed last summer, the doctor talks now about how the medical establishment, under the benevolent instruction of the drug companies, pushed opiates on the people to treat acute and chronic pain and, seemingly, just about everything else. I remember thinking it was absurd - everyone who came to the Emergency Room was asked if they were experiencing any pain, no matter what their chief complaint was, and to rate it on a 1 to 10 scale. Like if I came in because I was a little depressed after losing my job, you'd ask me that question and then give me a little something for it. Not the listening to me or the encouragement I really needed, but the medicine for the pain I didn't know I had. And now the numbers of addicted, overdosed, and converted over to heroin use are growing at a rate of ten percent or more a year for the last ten years or more.

I'm sitting in the same seats in which I fretted last summer,  ill at ease with the whole thing but trying to be supportive to you, trying now not to fall asleep. Did he say we, in this country, consume 99% of the worlds opiates? I believe he did say that.

Another man speaks. He used drugs for the first time when he was 8. He's now not used drugs for 28 years. He tells us that we - the treatment community-love to finger wag and, not surprisingly, that never helped him. He says what saved him, coming out of prison and going into treatment, were the people who saw his humanity and held it up, the people who believed in him until he learned to believe in himself.

Still smiling....

Leveling

Breakfast together and a long ride after, during which lots of talking occurred, most of it trivial and nervous, you thought. You injected, when possible, your feelings and provided several opportunities for an in-kind response, but it was not forthcoming.

Earlier you held her in her kitchen, she jumped up and wrapped her legs around you. You stayed that way with her for at least a minute. Didn't that signify something? You were looking for more hopeful signs like that, but they did not arrive.

Trying to explain herself, at your urging, she said something that cut you. When you reacted, she acted as if she'd misspoken, but it was the third time in the last couple of years she said something like that. This gnaws at you for the rest of the day. And though it's good to see her after such a long absence, you feel ill. It gets worse after you've dropped her off. Everything seems ambiguous, a cover. You shift from suspecting to knowing she is spending her time with someone new, and she never once said she wasn't. I do love you, she said, but...

Night falls. You are obsessing about this car you saw parked outside her house a couple of days ago. You have been thinking this thought for hours now. You know it's wrong to go there to check, but the thoughts are becoming more vivid, more demanding. You know it's not smart to feed this.

You will go there. You have a message prepared for when you see the car. You will tell her you are letting go. You will use the word goodbye - a word you've never said to her before.

When you get there, the car you expected to see is not there. You are not sure if you're relieved or disappointed. But her car isn't there either, and this brings on another round of speculation, of telling yourself stories. It's late. There are other possible explanations, but you know what you think you know. It fits well into the backdrop of the day and of the last silent month - her distance, politeness,  ambivalence, minimal physical expression of affection.

You text her a short message canceling a plan you had together, not using the words you had planned. You wonder if she will respond - and it looks like she is typing immediately, but then it stops. No reply comes. When you get home, you delete her from your contacts again.

I am letting go now.

Driving with her this morning, you noticed the grass greening west of here. The forsythia is beginning to bloom. After the forsythia comes warmer temperatures and the sweet smell of lilacs. They used to mean something to her. This would have been the third lilac season you saw together, had you made it.

Waves Become Wings...

Drag

As kids, we took turns dragging behind the farm truck on dusty dirt roads singing out the Indiana Jones theme song - dee, de, dee, dee - dee, de, dee !

We'd hold onto a length of rope, turning our bodies left and right, trying to avoid puddles and rocks. I'd drag like that until I lost my grip, well beyond the point of rope burn and pain. Not letting go was important. It was more than just endurance, it was a kind of faithfulness, your true measure as a man.

You can't hold on forever though, even if you want to. Especially if the driver of the truck has other plans.

How could you know?

Salvage and Waste

There aren't many days like this lately of staying in bed too long listening to silence, an occasional passing car, a fleeting bird call. But anxiety about waste, passing time, massing debt, and no particular direction creeps in before there is time enough to notice you have some time to yourself.

Let your soul heal, one voice says.
Get off your ass, says another.

Some of the things she gave you early on, you didn't return.

The shepherd's hook and platform feeder, empty and deserted now, hold memories of the color, life, and magic she brought into this empty place. She said you'd lost your brilliance. You said, I'm almost dead.

The solar powered daisy with the butterflies for hands moves happily when the sunlight reaches it. It's one of the first things she gave you. She placed it on the window sill without explanation. It was medicinal, and its effect was immediate. When it starts to move, it looks just like her, light and free. You wish you helped her stay there.

And the chimes - the sound of them is what love felt like between you. It was a beautiful dream. A great gift. How can you be sorry now?

When she takes a hold of you...

Spring Snow

Snowing on the first day of Spring, you drive to work reciting your list of new priorities. Life is so much bigger than her, you tell yourself.

She affects you like the blowing wind affects you, that's all. She's only passing,  just like everything else. Here and gone. There's no difference. Do the breathing exercise and think of that.

 I stand here as you blow past on your way to wherever you must. I trace you with my finger tips, breathe you,  feel you in so many colors and sensations, until you've passed completely, leaving the silent snow swirling and me looking after.

All thoughts are prey to some beast...

Test

The Jesuit said, you are never in love with anyone. You're in love with your own prejudiced and hopeful idea of another person. That's been rattling around in you for days now - a shutter banging crazily in the wind. You  can't sleep.

The hope is slowly bleeding from your prejudiced idea. She once kept a few of her things here in your drawer. You open it. She doesn't keep them here anymore. You do not keep a gun in the drawer either. What, you never think about it?

Your hair is more salt than pepper now. It's seven o'clock, might as well go to bed.

You think there's something wrong with your breathing when she leave this way. Almost asthma, you can't fully exhale or something. You are without rest or peace.

You removed her from your contacts again the last time. Changed the ring tone, and the text tone, so hers would be indistinguishable from any other. Now, that tactic has you checking every time something comes in. So you rename her number, assign a distinctive tone for calls and a different one for texts, in order to manage that problem. You hear it now - the sample, not the real thing - and your senses flood. Some of it was so good.

Now you are just waiting, not even pretending not to be.

They can tell you there's no magic, and that this is only a game you're playing with yourself, but they will have to do so more than once.

Chase the Dark Away...

A Morning, Not Where I Left It

Time change, it's an hour later
Sprung forward, but time enough yet for listening to birds
while walking up to the front door
(saw a red-winged blackbird on the roadside)
the boys are sleeping, the clock is ticking
try not to think about the blurred vision and
other things slipping, waning, while looking through
the window from kitchen to backyard  remembering
when the birds meant so much
harbingers of magic
thinking of missed cues, moments - sacred to one but not the other,
memories, keepsakes, special one-of-a-kind items or occasions,
treasures carefully kept, tumbled by winds when your back is turned,
stolen by encroaching tides, in half-sleep
left jammed between wall and bus seat
later found by an ignoramus
too coarse to discern its meaning
lost, mistaken for jetsam
a spectrum of tragedies like these
always rolling

French Restaurant

Wake to pain, annoyance, silence
something is holding it's breath
what are you waiting for now?

The only birds here are mourning doves
scan the mental landscape for direction
there it is - family life
a day in the city, a special day

You can't always think dreadfully
despite the rest

La la la la la la la la, it's a wild world...

Seven Days in Early March

A week slips by. She's got that puppy now, and I haven't seen her since. I'm busy working two jobs, commuting, making tiny installments on large bills, trying to get a bad neck fixed- but I notice and sleep poorly. What it means is what it means, I'm not chasing her.

Spring is trying to arrive. I saw a peeper last night hopping across the wet road. It seemed either optimistic or foolish.

This morning, outside my front door, a mirthless robin and I stood facing each other. I don't feel like a parade either. I'm not exactly walking on sunshine myself.

It's never easy, this changing, even when it's for the good.

They say another person can't make you feel anything - not happy, not sad - that you do it all yourself. That seems, right now, rather trite.

woman of the birds

Lulu

The crated puppy, a tiny Welsh Terrier of about 8 weeks, cried alone in the air freight office having just flown across the country. She stopped for a moment when she saw me. I talked to her and she licked my finger tip stuck through the gate which was secured with zip ties. The attendant asked to see an ID. I showed her my driver's license, and with very little scrutiny she released the puppy into my care.

She didn't like the car ride much either. I thought maybe I should have put the crate in the front seat where she'd be closer to me and feel less abandoned, but now we were stuck in traffic, and there was nothing I could do about it. I talked to her, then sang to her, then sang to myself in order to keep the rising negative emotion at bay. Something else demanding of my attention, something loud with urgent needs. My body remembered a particular kind of tension, the anxiety and responsibility of raising very small children in a world that doesn't make it easy.

I wanted to stop somewhere to let her out of that crate, to give her water and food and the chance to move about, but I had to get off the highway first. Before I was able do that, a combination of the sound of the wheels and exhaustion from all that crying probably made her fall asleep.

We rode in silence for the next hour. I found myself worrying maybe the puppy had been crying because she was hanging or stuck or something, struggling to free herself and crying for my help, and I ignored her cries until she was exhausted, stopped struggling, and asphyxiated. How would I explain this to the woman texting every fifteen minutes for a status update?

A Call From A Far Away City

My friend just called from a far away city. He called me last week too, but I didn't answer. The last time I spoke to him, he was anticipating bad news regarding his wife's prognosis. They had an appointment at the hospital the next day. I intended to call him back to find out how it went, but I was busy and didn't.

She's dead now. Cancer took her very quickly. It had spread everywhere, and there was nothing for it. He told me how helpless he felt sitting with that knowledge and with his woman. It took ten days.

He had to get away from his home town - from the rooms they occupied together, from her clothes and photographs, from their grown children and family friends. He flew off to a far away city, a friend let him crash there. You don't know what it's like, he said, I was lost.

He sunk into the city for ten days and nights. It's better to be lost in a strange place than to be lost at home. He found perspective among the street people there, saw that being lost was a matter of degree, and that it could get worse. Far worse. Now he's talking to me, ready to go home and try life without her. Their children have packed up her things.

I can see him unlocking the front door, stepping inside. No fire burning, no sound, no light. The absence of her. The hole in himself. Forcing his feet to move - courage, despair, courage, despair, courage...

I saw my baby. and she took back all she said...

Waking

Something she said again. Lousy text message leaving you to interpret. Did she mean this or that? Work through the weekend with this question rattling in your head.

One interpretation means she's with you, the other means it's just too much trouble. Elation or deflation.

 I get up for work again. Debt slave. Always waiting for something.

Step into my heart...

Elusive

She is asleep beside me, warm against me, her hand over mine. I am drifitng off, entering a perfect state, the holy place. The phone rings and wakes us both. I have to leave this in order to assess three heroin addicts in the hospital's emergency department. They're trying to find a way to stay in that holy place too.

So take it by both hands and shake it if you need it...

San Diego

Everyone likes it for its weather, and that in itself made me suspect something was wrong with me. She's there now, vacationing, thinking about moving back, logistics. It hurts to know that I do not figure into her calculus.

I have memories there walking the streets all night, sometimes sleeping in the bus station, doorways, Balboa Park. I was looking for something more real than what the others did with their weekends, walking my feet raw, drinking street wine, hurting myself. I found a girl, and maybe that saved me from what I was heading for. San Diego seemed like an on going party I didn't really want to be at - Life's a Beach, Corona and lime, gnarly dude, crystal, older men approached me on Broadway offering money, beautiful girls seemingly without brains or soul or substance. I had New England gloom and tension inside me and I couldn't make it fit there.

The desert had it's appeal though. And Mexico's brown eyes. Getting lost in a place of danger and not knowing, or caring, if I'd make it back out.

She's in San Diego now, smiling in the sunshine. I feel her.

My friends turned to demons there. The girl whose car I paid off working two jobs - hardly sleeping, rarely eating - left me for another man because I did not want to marry while so young, poor and uncertain. Crystal Meth turned Ian into a prisoner, then a homeless man, then lost for good. My mentor and best friend threw me a party the day I left for Back East. He told me he loved me and slipped a .38 snub-nose into my hand. "For the road",  he said. I saw a flash of evil in his eyes and my ultimate undoing. Something has always been there trying to push me off.

I left the gun there to menance someone else and drove the old bus into the desert feeling as low as I ever had. In those next weeks, any moment could have been punctuated with a bullet, and it would have made sense. Something has always been there to steer me away.

She's in San Diego, without me, unknowingly mingling with my ghosts in the warm, dry air. Maybe she's also mingling with new aquaintances. Maybe one of them will be the kind of meeting that changes the direction of a life. Meanwhile, her ambivalent ghost flits in and out of this room. It's snowing here, very cold, and the birds are suffering through.

Stop Suffering...

Part of The Story

Adversity reveals where you stand with others, who the other really is, and who you really are. I can tell you that I am alone. I don't want to tell you the rest.

Count your blessings. It won't take long. Better to know than to continue to live in delusion. Truth is always better, right? Better to find out now than later. Before you invest too much. Before you come to feel her as essential. Good thing it happened now. Good thing.

I've always been a better person starving anyway.

I Thought The World Of You...

What Made It Bearable

The snowfall's increasing with swirling clouds on the gusts. This is about the time of the bluebird miracle last year, isn't it? You came to me then, and we stayed together, snowed in comfortably. I've been waiting for your call today, it hasn't come, and now the snow is coming heavier. You won't be coming here. You've got other things to think about now. I couldn't sleep thinking about it last night, like some sticky cancer. Not everything has to be sad though, right?

I don't ever want to be alone with all my darkest dreaming...

Stage of Grief

Not expecting to go so far back and remember the feelings there so viscerally. Not expecting to see the trajectory from there to here, from this perspective, so clearly. Shot from a gun then, and somehow now I can look over my shoulder and see through the hole in everything all the way back to the smoke curling up and out of the muzzle. Hearing again the words that formed you. Remembering separation, starvation, suffocation, bleeding all that feeling, never making it. Never making it.

A history of cold wind through empty rooms, distant laughter, elsewhere parties, intermittent sounds of love not quite muted by the walls. Sitting here, bottomless. 

I couldn't read it...

An Event During A Snowstorm

Closed now, the eyes of constant disapproval
Will it also silence your voice in me?
Doubter and Negater
Corrosive to all confidence, satisfaction, trust, comfort
Any possible victory
Worth.

We never did make our peace
I couldn't find a picture of how that should look
Could you? Did you look for one?
We just got on with it, held the tension
Mostly avoiding further collision

Now you are no more
And there is no victory or relief
Just a lot of time spent clenched
Gone

I'm gasping in a foot of snow
Shoveling and cursing
Remembering when the hot tears
The sweat and the hate were
All for you. Now, I don't know
Who they're for.

Care

She brought soup after working a twelve hour shift while you were flat on your back in your bed with a taste for nothing. The soup tasted good. She said you looked unwell and listened to your lungs, but you knew already wellness was closer at hand. No pneumonia. She stayed the night and left early for work half-pissed because you coughed all night and kept her awake, but she stayed, risking infection. The gesture did not go unappreciated. Now you are somewhat better and imbuing things with significance again.

The cure and the disease...

A Moment of Life in a Lifetime of Time

Help her with a sad task. Hold her through tears, loss, despair. When you see her face, the three silent weeks and what they might have meant are forgotten. She tells you she knows you are sending love while you hold her. You are, and you hope she can feel it and understand. You hope that it does her some good. She'll leave again soon, but now she is here, and that sacred feeling descends. You open. You cannot be sure she will do the same. This is fleeting, potentially deadly and, some would say, illusory. To you it is absolutely right, real, more vital than your own blood.

Security

Especially vulnerable in the morning. Waking up is dangerous. The same is true throughout the night. You left the window open, the doors unlocked, and intruders came in. Your mind raises possibilities, shows you images you do not want to see. Your mind must be managed at all times. Check the locks, post a sentry. Vigilance. And if you really want the power and pain of those images to fade, you must  kill her off- really let her go. You must stop waiting and turn your back. Ready for that?

And then your mind turns. You know at least some of what she is contending with. You've got to give her time. You try to send help, strength, calm. You have to let her go, but you don't have to turn your back. You'll wait because you remember .

Angel, I'm getting stronger. Angel, won't be much longer...

Too Long

Her first name is uncommon, yet this week he's heard it spoken three times attached to different last names. Three false alarms. Three alternative paths. Three possible women, stories, dreams.

He's thinking of this, breathing shallow inhalations, the last of the good air in this small space. They were just playing hide and seek. He's well hidden inside an old cast-off refrigerator with the door shut tight. There's no handle on the inside, and he doesn't realize she's been called home for dinner. He'll expire here. The fact that she's not even looking for him gradually comes to dominate his awareness. He wonders who she will become after him.

She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones...

A Simple Twist of Fate

Andy spends much of his time in the car unhappy with the radio, cursing the other drivers, and changing the stations. Last night he heard the theme from Taxi Driver on a jazz station and it settled him a little. Then came the theme from Midnight Cowboy, "everybody's talking at me, I can't hear a word they're saying, only the echoes of my mind..."

He hasn't seen Sunny in over a week. She's on hiatus again, said she had things to handle. This time she told him not to wait. She texted a cryptic happy new year last week, but other than that, silence. He's an interpreter of silences. He has so far filled the void with several story lines which he edits and reworks a little every day.

He's immersed himself these past few weeks in work, self-help reading, and exercise. Resilience is living in - and dealing squarely with - the new normal, minute by minute. The new normal is one in which she, unambiguously, no longer wants to be with him. Winners look forward. Losers dwell in the past. He's resolved this year to be ok no matter what she does.

Bob Dylan comes on next telling about a star-crossed encounter, and Andy can see himself in every scene along with traces of Sunny. He's remembering and softening now. His resololution suddenly seems like a betrayal, or at least premature, and he's in doubt again.

People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within
I still believe she was my twin...

Andy sings along with Bob the last line- blame it on a simple twist of fate. As it fades, his phone dings with her tone. The message is a short sentence regarding the rebounding health of her dog. Athough absolutely nothing has changed in their relationship, for a moment, everything is exactly right.

 

I'm Going Back To Strange...

What's so New?

Not angry about New Year's Eve and the hype
Surrounding it, but I avoided it, I'll tell you that

I'm not a hater - believe me - I've searched my soul

But I can't feel your enthusiasm for it or

Maybe I'm just depressed by the canned
And patterned nature of it

An unqualified automatic response on cue
Wooooooo!

No matter what shape this thing is in

Where were you when the ball dropped?

I want to ask her, but I don't