more fragments from sorting through my studio papers:

god give good rest to all our misdirected saintings, give us sleep that does what it’s supposed to—not this restless acting out of dumb desires, of these titanic litanies of fear.

and what devil should I turn to when gods prove unkind? all this foolish talk a shorthand for the real desire

(brother, you know it, and all the boys I schoolyard chase with password guesses must know too):

to be the sharer of an esoteric knowledge, a reader-out of codes

to hold in your head the symbols others miss, and know their meaning, whispered in late-night treehouse voices. to know yourself a seeker and infiltrator, a caresser of truth hidden in the glut of life in all its details, falling on your body without pause. 

-

Oh, help, for I am a ceaseless reader of signs. Put all this serial attention to use before it kills me. All these messages grinding away on their silver wires, dangling before my twitching eyes. 

Let me slowly build a language, a tongue for this country I inhabit:

one the lips can shape while swollen, one that a drunk and lonely man can hold within his arms. Let this flood of words finally find its route. 

-

Perhaps I fold the lot of you into the vast poetic mannish shape of all those tragic lady poets, stuff my mouth with yearning words. Or I fit you each with wings to float above the Castle Duino. Or I plunge this hot and foolish lust to the bottom of the lake, and count my heart the bubbles rising up. 

-

Watch me quietly abandon my folly. Take a knife to tongue to spare the night air all this too-much speaking. What good language misdirected, lost? all my nurturing instinct led away from my collapsing house and brought instead to lay at the broken feet of pretty men that I would fuck to solace in my stead. Caregiver to all but those who hold its greatest claim. 

-

Give me, then, this pleated suffering–let me tangle all your aching limbs in my dark hair, grown back longer than the darkened hall. Abstracted desire stifling itself into the form of some arbitrary object: this is how I love a stranger, and so keep your secrets just like giving a gift. But still, I want to know what Furies follow you. Give you some spare night of safer harbor, to look the Kindly Ones in their dust-filled eyes and say yes, I know, for you follow me too, but please, just these few hours rest? Our cage-beaten hearts in brief proximity, the solace of a decoding ear and a soft tongue in your mouth. So much pain and mystery to speak of, but every word I write speaks “loneliness,” a keen into the adolescent dark.