checkerboard friends

red and black, checkerboard friends.

here we go.

i'll be light and you'll be dark

like our souls

and the first move will be mine

because you always prefer to have the last word.

diagonal pawn

i am

calculating my next move

and then it's all mind games and ticking off turns.

back and forth

ping-pong

on the fence and on the move.

the shape of an L for

the nobleman that you are

but you can't fool me.

i'll take the straight line to the end

to get a piece of myself back.

you'll return it because you have to.

those are the rules.

the king seems to have all the power

but his moves are limited,

and therein lies your mistake.

it's truly the queen,

i,

who has all the power,

command of the board now.

watch me as i defeat you

thought by thought

word for word

piece by piece,

swimming

fluidly through the madness

across numbers and squares

and the awesome force of your hand

can't do a thing

because the control paradigm has shifted;

i had to crouch to your level and

play this despicable game with you,

a game you've gotten good at over the years

but haven't quite perfected.

off you go to a comfortable corner

where hiding has become a futile excuse

to all you are,

but laid out here in front of me

in plain view --

checkerboard friends,

checkerboard life --

i can see your thoughts

before you can voice them,

what otherwise might evolve into insult or injury.

and for the first time

the flaws in your thinking are apparent, too,

the flaws in the righteousness you claim,

the flaw in the plan

and now you'll offer a waltz for peace,

one-two-three,

one-two-three,

ample chance to trip me up

and then make your final kill.

but if you'd been anything close to sincere

you'd have seen

the trap i've been setting for you

from the get-go.

i'm here and you're over there,

hand outstretched for a dance

but in the midst of your inaugural bow the queen has triumphed.

ivory over ebony,

good over evil,

woman over monster.

a whispered farewell now

for you

and some sort of closure now for me

in the form of

checkmate.

here we go, here

we go.

02.2010

intentional

i wonder if you're all happy

now or if you're defending lives

you've gotten accustomed to, lives

you ended up with but never

actually chased down, lives

tethering you to the place where

you grew up, where we all grew up.

i wonder, as the flame still alight for you

in a corner of my heart finds a

bit of new air for rekindling --

i wonder if this is the life you had imagined.

i hope you're happy.

i hope that no one has called you names

or judged you for being a small-town boy

who had a child out of wedlock.

i hope your marriages are stronger

than your parents' ever were

and that you didn't do it

because it was the cool thing to do.

i hope we've all moved past that notion

of doing things to be cool.

i hope you aren't stared down in hallways

or tripped in stores accidentally-on-purpose.

i hope your shoes are always with-the-times

and your hair, not yet graying.

i hope you are making your own money

and realizing how hard it is to keep it for yourself.

i hope you smile at more things now

and that you've had to swallow your pride

once or twice. i hope that

for myself a lot, too.

i hope that you don't hesitate

to help someone when they ask

and that you help them even

when they are too afraid to ask.

i hope that all of your struggles,

everything you've lived through,

have enabled you to learn

about the kind of person you are

now.

i hope you think of the people you've hurt

with fondness, especially those

you didn't know you were hurting

and i hope you forgive the people

who have ever made you leave the table

to go cry in the bathroom.

i hope you forgive the people

who offered empty apologies

just to make themselves feel better.

i hope you never get tired of hearing or saying

i'm sorry.

i hope we are contributing members of society now

and that we think seriously about the future

even if we aren't sure

or don't want to know

where it will take us.

i hope the diamonds on your fingers sparkle

as brightly as your eyes do

and that you remember how good it feels

to be complimented sincerely

by somebody you don't know.

i hope you've found something lonely

in this world to believe in.

most of all, i hope that we don't forget.

whatever it is that you still hold on to

from then until now, i hope

it stays with you, welding itself

into the workings of your psyche.

i mostly hope that you are

better, stronger, kinder and humbler.

i mostly hope that we have all

changed from imbeciles into adults,

into human beings who matter to somebody.

that is all that i hope

for all of you, whom i'd nearly,

intentionally,

left behind

08.2011

only ours

you're not sure when you stopped

meaning something.

well, since you asked,

yes, i do miss the things

that were once only ours.

our favorite place to be

was in the front seats of your car,

you at unsteady wheel

and me picking up your misses on the road.

Matt Nathanson would happily serenade us

and you and i would serenade him right back

as if he could hear us through a one-sided stereo,

but we always did him one better

by harmonizing --

you so loved those harmonies

we shared.

they brought his music to life for us,

the too-true lyrics

resonating long after the songs had ended.

it was like

this guy

had taken our own lives,

read every page

and written about them,

spreading experience, emotion

across radio waves

and bedrooms

and iPods

and hearts

like the tastiest butter.

i still recall fondly

the concert he gave at our school;

at five bucks per head

it was a fucking steal

but he must have known

we were broke college kids

who'd wasted our parents' money

on beer the week before.

he asked what we wanted to hear

and we told him

and he listened and played it all

into perfection.

you got it all on camera

and sent me the videos;

i watch them now

and as amazing as Matt was that night

all i can think of

is you

because he was ours.

the best day i had last summer

was my 23rd birthday

when you visited me in Florida

and we spent it in Walt Disney World,

a place that had seemed only mine

for weeks

and then opened up to accommodate you

there in the midst of my dream.

we rode Mission: Space together

and Zach got so excited

to be a part of the journey

that he dubbed us Team Awesome

and there we were,

a cluster of young adults

who'd been transformed by the magic

into invincible kids.

we had a superhero stance and everything.

we rode it five times in a row

so we'd all have a turn at each role,

and that day

all of it --

the buttons on the inside that we couldn't wait to push,

Gary Sinise as our trusty flight director,

going to space and back in four minutes,

all of it

was ours.

the night before you left

in the hotel

we were in bed

talking about life

and i cried

because i'd been lonely and homesick,

because it had meant the world to have visitors,

because i didn't want you

to go.

you held me

and cried with me

and told me that you loved me

and that at last

you understood what i felt for you.

it pains my heart to know

how often you think of that moment now;

i remember it like yesterday

too.

but somewhere in between the beginning and the end

i got hurt

and in turn you got hurt

and the things that had been only ours

disintegrated back into

facts of life

for everyone.

i'm not sure when you stopped

meaning something;

i don't think you've stopped

meaning something.

but if we've lost

those things that were ours,

much of the meaning

has gotten lost, too,

all that ever defined you and me

has gotten lost, too.

yes, i do miss the things

that were once only ours.

05.2010

of you i only remember the last week (II)

of you

i only remember

the last week in March, the

day before you were to return to Germany

i could not fathom having

gotten so close to you so quickly

and now oceans separating our laughter again

just like that

those parties chez toi

they always made me nervous, cringing

to think of conversing in French for three

four, five hours, hours of exhaustion

before i came i indulged on red wine

the sweet kind from the Loire just nextdoor

and you moved out so it wasn't your business now was it

my head got foggy on purpose

i had to have a foggy head

to fucking stand another drawn-out soirée

where you are the guest of honor

you were always the guest of honor and

i never felt good enough to be sitting on your right side

the joke of the Loiret who knew no way to be happy here

but i had my trusty wine in my belly

and i was golden, conversational wiz

confidence surfacing from the too-conscious parts of my brain

and i giggled perhaps a bit louder and longer

and you asked me with a smile if i was already drunk

yes! i wanted to scream, yes! i am!

because i don't want to fucking be here

with these temporary people who tolerate me!

you can at last stop tolerating me

Veronika gave you a necklace but

you did like her more than me didn't you

i gave you some perfume of mine

to remember me, if you can

if you are capable of remembering

you handed me my give-a-damn on a polished plate

i should have thrown it to the floor

and enjoyed the crash instead

08.2012

on a day she feels like trying

on a day she feels like trying

delusional girl

can make headlines

settle down,

delusional girl

your story's already been told

08.2011

i have something dire to tell you

i have something dire to tell you

naive girl

how i admire you, dear

your hair kept clean, your eyes aglow in photos

and don't forget those rosy rosy doll cheeks

no one can ever tell if you're embarrassed

or if you've had a bit too much wine

or if you were just born that way

how i admire you, dear

naive girl

but it'll burn you, baby

how i wish i could tell you that

your phone number is not for free

neither is your body

or your pride

how i want to tell you

men don't want to be your friend

they want to insert a coin

and make you light up

hoping the payout will be sex

and one of these days they will break you

taking you for all you're worth, jackpot

naive girl

how i wish i had told you that

[this is part of a series that began this past year writing about girls i know in real life. women in general are interesting creatures, but sometimes they can be quite baffling and so i write about them. the "girl" series is one i'm quite proud of, hope you like it, too. x]

04.2012

you look too long

one of the finer things about being a woman

is that she can always always

sense a lingering set of eyes,

remaining a moment too long

where perhaps they should not be.

i do not love you still

but your silky blues so honorably betray you.

it's the same awkward conversation.

you compliment my snake bracelet and i

say thank you and look away

and ask how your father is.

it's like that apocalyptic minute in your car

when we gambled our feelings at once

and the dice all landed on yes, let's be lovers.

it's like us and our movie-scene first kiss

on the front steps where anyone could see.

it's like i'm 21 again.

but you haven't let me go,

not really.

even after i asked you to.

i toss back Chardonnays like water, you know me,

and when there's music again

i'm on the floor

because it's a wedding and

because all of my friends' hearts are full as ever

and that means we should be

dancing like we did in college.

i do and we are drinking each other's smiles, all of us,

and you are there too at last

and i catch you looking

and you look too long.

you look at me,

glowing from my pores,

and i am in an instant, in some words

the one who got away.

you aren't supposed to wonder when you stare; your

girlfriend should be where your

eyes end up. but i am

the gravity tethering you to uneven ground

i'm no longer standing on.

i am no fire worth ogling,

no explosion in the sky. i am only

the girl you thought you knew,

the one who erupted into your heart,

a whimsical twirl in sync with your beat:

melancholy but all at once

wrong for me, wrong like

how you look too long at me

still.

07.2012

fault line

i got on a bus to you today

thinking that the gesture

would at last show some shred

of how much you have always meant

to this friend-forged heart: you were never

secondary. i have, since we grew to all fruition,

held you in highest regard, in

the sincere circle of all i hold

dear. that is where you will remain.

today was your birthday. we

did vodka shots like when we were in college

and i knew we were back to being invincible

again and i was riveted to know

you felt it, too. the rift we usually feel

is part of a regurgitated fiction

we've created to somehow justify

the distance neither of us can stand

and i hate it and so i came to you

and built a bridge over the void

and we crossed hand-in-hand and

burnt it behind us so

we'd never go back to that.

i got on a bus to you

so we would both be held accountable,

so i wouldn't be the only fault line

haunting the fissured earth at our feet --

i need to at last be validated

in eyes that have too long

held me over the edge, a step

from walking off an unfair plank,

you pushing me to a fraying sea that

could never hope to contain all i am

or all you are to me.

08.2011

breaking

suburban sunset rain falls down and i am
not walking in it or running in it
i am alive in it though i am witnessing
the maddening beauty of Mother Nature breaking
New Jersey's incessant heat wave this time around
Taylor takes pictures of it as if he'll never
see it again in his lifetime he may not who knows
i cross my legs on the coffee table it's not mine
it belongs to Starbucks but their furniture is so comfy
it feels like a living room with an impossible window
to heaven

07.2011

no bottle for it anyway

i threw my hat across the Atlantic

figuring it would be easier to get back to you

than the standard message; i had

no bottle for it anyway, not

one to hold all i want to say.

homeward bound

i knew you'd keep it safe for me

until i could thank you in traded breath

and spill the contents of a stained glass chest

without making a mess of everything.

sometimes even i

don't know my own strength.

keep me, keep me here.

05.2012