“I can’t see your face in my mind” –The Doors
There are some who feel more acutely
than others life is a forgetting and a failure.
She was attracted to me and would stand
in the corner, waiting. A first name alone shows up.
Is a street name enough?
What do we remember?
What dies with you? Trash heaps and fires cover the land.
It is a given there is unique poetry that is gone.
We are vanishing, even in our most intimate records.
Sociology of sex. A thesis earning her a Harvard Summa.
What do you remember?
I’m wondering if you understand.
Our jealous, communal, anonymity
needs to go. Let’s really talk.
A diary writer judges you like no one else.
My diary threatens to become a novel.
Julieta!
As a poem it failed.
Wood that would not be carved.
Are we going to Wally’s?
Drunk again.
Was a diary saved,
a song? Record, record! The tape ran out.
The hedge forgets itself in the Lake District.
These oceans do not pause.
Memory fails to add. I forget things.
I need more than her name.
The pipeline’s smashed.
Whole tribes are dust.
History today is today’s blame.
You know so much. That’s why I trust you.