10.5.17

how many thousand ways must i request your presence?
it is this precisely that destroys me,
that your ghost is a conspicuous absence,
a refrain from the haunt. i wish that even for a single night
you’d rattle the windows and throw chairs across the room and throttle doorknobs
just to get at me

and i’d drive you back
to the oblivion you came from
brandishing the name of a god i’ve only prayed to
on a single occasion about a week after you died
and i wept by the light of the television
with a bong gripped in my hand as my woman held me
and said nothing and deescalated my misery with her soft hand
on the scruff of my neck

and as i thought of you we made delirious love
and i vomited through my penis the terrible darkness
you instilled in me; i would use the name of that god to banish you
back to the outer world of memory.
just for one night if you’d find me.
because i’ve been expecting this for some time
but all the ghosts in my life are alive

and death has eaten the only soul i cared for.
what do i remember?

your blue cotton jumpsuit and the smell of your exhausted skin
first thing in the morning. the snails on your bedroom window
in the summer. your collection of cars which i now own
and wish that i could burn. playing minesweeper on your macintosh.
more will come back to me with time and i will reach out again when the pain resurfaces like a body disposed of in a lake, bobbing on the surface, exposed for all the world.

Written at 11:48 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA, while staring at a bottle of kombucha and deciding on its worth.