Slices of the Curtain Provide a View to the Construction of a New Hotel

Will you stay with me? Will you be my love?

And then you realise:
It's all just minutes round a clock.
The goal.
Minutes that fly without a handle, no reality to hold him back.
A goal you had as a young man.
The hours they come so lightly, so flippantly,
as if it were of no matter.
The goal.
The goals you had when the sun was full of lust,
When spring was full of a fluid
To drip below the noose,
Dry your neck of blood like a tired mother.

And then you know:
You can't stand their touches,
You memorise the feel of a fingernail on an eyebrow
You rehearse the sound of laughter appropriate for only a parlor at noon.
You kill the love that I put inside of you.
And you kill me, too.

I didn't realise I knew you
It's of no matter
to say
after you've gone,
That I cannot stop loving your loveless heart.

I could make it better, did you know that? I could teach you, and I could hold you when you're tired. I could not hold you when you want to run away from it, so fast that your feet blur in with grass and dirt. If you want to run away, I'd carve the path; I'd set the clocks and the stops; I'd bring you water at the end of the long, wicked trail. You know I would.

But, once again, it's all a loveless heart that got put into your chest.
[I could lay my head down there some days back.
Could I once more?]
Who put it there, I do not know.
It's wrong and vile that you should have it.
It's wrong and vile that I should not have it.

You don't want me,
so I go.

I can walk at night amidst those minutes I waste,
I waste words on my agenda
I waste wisdom on practice
I waste my life away on impossible fancies.

....

Jeannette is putting on make-up
A small mirror in her hands.
I can see books and clothes sprayed like the sky of
a moment in a life in a tiny lovely town
I can see her eyelashes now.
Robin sits behind me
She is quiet and focused
Drinking tea, on a happy sunny Sunday.

And when all I could think about is you
For a small, wonder part of this day,
I forgot
And I sipped at tea from Ohio
With a strainer
In a Styrofoam cup
Warm
Snow melting outside in Indiana
Music in my ears
Eliot's words in my eyes
I felt okay then.
I felt fine.