liveAudience

Bryan

The dream is not here
the dream isn’t now
as dark thoughts and intuitions gray
mark the beginning
of this beautiful, sunny day

screaming from beyond
the hapless veil of nights’ sweet promise
lifted and becomes
the truth that day bemoans reality
of disenchantment
when none becomes one

separated from here
separated from now
separated from you all
the day begins
your chance arrived
it’s time to change
that which boils inside

the inner whisper
will soon grow strong
take its advice
it may steer you astray
to a place, to a time
make me wish
you were still mine

possessive me, possessive you
this never should have been
my call to truths
left untold
and all alone

i cry out to what’s above
and feel the darkness
that I atone
and bemoan
as a lone
soul astray
will you start to fade away?

the sun yells through
the dark and stormy thoughts
as i awake
and the fear fades away
I will stay strong
for another day

maybe here
maybe now
I often wonder
if we’ll be together
somehow, some way, somewhere
strange and foreign
is where I am but not where I belong
the self I thought I lost
has risen out of dust

the ashes that have fallen
and covered me whole
a single wail of thought
a never ending holler
the dream becomes nightmare
becomes day and is reality
from the greatest depth
my heart and soul
wail and yell
shout and cry
but I scream so fucking loud
as I feel reborn
and ready to live again
happily

Lcooper

We lay on my Boston back porch, eating homemade ice cream sandwiches and watching Lindsley’s film. You’re amazed by it. It’s beautiful. And you forget that she gave it to me, that the young woman in the film is a friend of mine, and that she wrote the poetic narration. You hold me tight to your skinny frame.

“Don’t leave me!” you shout, waking both of us up.
And then again, “Don’t leave me!” You grab my body—our legs entangled and your face pressed into my chest.

While we rest, the afternoon wearies. The sun sneaks behind the river and we decide that our night will be better spent on your Cambridge roof.

Grover

dg

recently i discovered
(understood)
that we are made of water.

because i came right apart.
margarine, even the nail.
[and i don't know where we end.]

Rebecca

Letter to a friend.

Dear T,

Your apartment smelled so good tonight when we walked in after you picked us up from class and we told you but you said it was only the marinade. Nothing was cooking yet. We oohed and ahhed about the decadent meal you had planned and ate crackers and drank rum and balanced on our bare feet in your kitchen, adoring you. Whenever you sigh dismissively about your sorrow your girlfriend, my best friend, and I look at each other. There is nothing we can do except look that way and there is nothing you can do, we know, except sigh. No one dismisses anything but we do talk a lot about the type of hot sauce.

Chunks of garlic are floating in the marinade and I move closer to watch how you work. “Did you tell her?” Our girlfriend asks you. And you haven’t told me yet– so you do… while you’re oiling the grill with a silicone spatula and wondering aloud whether there isn’t a better way.

There has to be some better way to respond but there isn’t. For weeks I’ve been coming over with my own heart heavy with News that I can’t always bear. You help me ignore it even if I have to force you to and now I know what you feel like. You hug me and I hug you in pulsing, nominal ways. You tell your story and I embrace you as if to comfort you but you know it is really a transitional hug to comfort me. And then we repeat. We can’t hug for real right now. This dwarfs hugging. We’ll have to hug for real. Later.

You put the food on the grill and we think it smells even better. Sometimes I think that you care so delicately and intently for the femmes in your life in order to articulate in action the kind of silent care we’re giving to you. (Both of us in different ways of course.) After a minute or two we start coughing. I want to be able to love you more loudly but those kind of exhortations roll off you as if you think you aren’t worthy. Little coughs at first and not enough to stop the conversation or the laughter but the food is so spicy that it’s getting in our throats. The air in the apartment is full of chili.

“Remember that time in Oakland when we were coughing like this? What were you making?” She asks you. You strain to remember. Even the dog is blinking wildly now.

In the meantime we go back to the big and abstract and try to cut it up into manageable plan-sized pieces. We synopsize. I say my thing and you say yours. Mine has been in the room longer so I try to play it off like a joke but death never hulks as quietly as I wish it would. We talk diminutively about our elephants as if they were characters on Next Top Model. Sure we have our special ones, we’ve made our commitments to particular people. And sure they’re important. But somewhat arbitrarily so and only on Wednesdays. Once the season ends we vow never to talk about them again– except ironically.

Cancer and suicidal alcoholism. Ha ha

“Cajun food!” You were making cajun food that night when you kept coughing. But it wasn’t the spice it was the burnt oil from the beignets. “You have to deep fry them,” you explain. I know and you know I know.

T, it’s unbearably loud in here with just how quiet it is.