there's this picture

there's this picture of you and me i keep seeing
somehow
it makes me think that you are a happy person
who is secretly sad and that i am a sad person
who is secretly happy.

what is the worst way to hang,
roland? roland outside the bar is thinking of his father.

i hold his hand. i stroke his face. i would carry him
but he is too tall and i am not enough.
i need the help lifting my own body

over the wall to get into the bar where no one drinks,
the kitchen where no one has been cooking the appetizers
for years. there are two rooms full of metal chairs. the shadows
of chairs stacked one on the other dance with the flicker
of a bic lighter. i burn my thumb, say shit, and then burn it again.

you want to hold my hand, don't you and we can't see our faces in the dark.
yes, it was special. yes, i was happy. we sat in a sad crawl space
we had to dangle over a 12 foot drop to get into. a homeless man, a person
lives here. we sat in a sad crawl space together and i was so very happy.
we thought about breaking a window but didn't.

day 9

one of these days & these boots, i think, when i remember matthew aizenstadt in the highschool cafeteria after a thre year dissapearance. typewriter tip tip tip tip tip tip tip tip tippta aye tip ta tip ta tip ta aye, could be my morning excersize, yoga, a walk to the curb (no mail) and backwards. calm down oldbaoy, i'd like to think but he doesn't need it. he's happy. they're all happy and they're all hapy without me and maybe they might want to get coffee or they would get coffee if i wanted them to, too, but some of them wouldn't ask unless i asked first and they don't need me. they're happy and they don't owe me. that'sa good thing. its a good thing being happy like a cool pillow. i have the cats and they owe me a lot. i have all the receipts and the film negatives which nothing ever happens to. they just either get lost or they don't and they just stay there. a lot like matt aizenstadt, i think. matt aizenstadt and his fishbowl metaphor and his girlfriend lindsay and not speaking anymore and the higschool assembly third row and the sunroom couch once and in the car once driving with the heat on and the windows rolled down, the insistence that it was always this way and it had to be this way. the thinking of it as a new thing & curious.