America,
amore, I can
I know 
survive you.

I can revive & re-love
you. & rejoice & re-
vivisect your joie de vivre.
& put it all on video.

I can enclose you
closely       in mind
but not altogether clearly.

Americana,  you are

a smattering of light insults, a slathering of lathe.

Please forgive my form.
I fit you
fitfully, & fearful        & form myself
from our forced embrace.

I forget myselfin you
at times at times

I confront you curious
of a cure for you   
& acquiesce.

Originally I wanted nothing from you.
Then nothing but a wedding
a weekend in your warmer climates
a breakout scene
a body full of bubbles.

Bur went the bitter cold.
Ping went the pipes.

Originally I was born & bred. 
& read, to be an original
a burgeoning
aboriginal
a bore 
in short appeased to be aborted
by ambition     or merely
applauded, then weakened
in the familiar way
awaiting the final pause.

But things don’t much align
with the imagined seductive
do they?

Why is every dinner with you lately
me staring at my fists?

Now a peace between us
is my preference.

But peace is not the pleasant
settling into we hear in the hopeful
& vaguely compassionate voices  is it—
it’s a mesa
a plateau, a stabilization
formed from warring elementals
armed
with what they’ve been educated 
to suppress, or contain
or influence others to accept
with education.

There’s a word I’d like to have with you
by which I mean share.
By which I mean a word or two.

With an undercarriage double-thump 
that might be mass transit
or mass exodus

my heart goes 
out
to you, with you, like
a phantom light 
in a coffee can…

I need a way back in-
to document—
this so-little human voice a living
archive   
a testament
to our relationship

let this be part of my cumulative 
directorial debut

an updraft
of snow falling
into orbit

& obit.
But not just yet.

I’ve brought you a pocket
full of pleases. A thank you.
A think tank. A thunk trunk.
A picnic basket of preamble
a play on our precious
precious us.

Let’s devise in this short time
together  a systematic operation 
of inclusion—
catching what falls between
binaries    

thump-thump heart in erasure & recovery
hump-dumpheart in loving & loss
bump-lumpheart in fear & facing finality
thump-slumpheart in pivotal arrest & arraignment

etc., & between each, our stories

Amour, I submit to our 
minor clashes, 
to our miscarriages of maybes.
But I cannot complete the circle
of whatever vows—hand over heart—
I took by being born to you.
I can’t
I know
survive you.

I love that you are more 
than a compilation of life’s
vivid bits,
comprised of trans-
generational, trans-
sexual, national, lingual, trans-
spiring
circuitries of cohabitation—
commerce to intercourse—
& move 
from benign to being generous
to beguiling
& unbearable

so often—you yourself perhaps
were born 
of too simple
a belief system

by which I mean a high belief 
in your own accumulative 
precociousness.

But this behavior cannot stand.
Because this believer 
cannot himself stand
by youas himself

wanting neither to be
your Ex
or have you as my dieu

(adieu d'eux deux).

America,
amoureux, I cannot
I know 
accept you       (in full)

except to accept
I am youin whatever ways I am
& will change
what I can about myself
& what I can about you
to make you     a better us.

Like the slow drift
of atmospheres 
over continents
I respectfully decline your borders. 

But like the lover
I am
I keep you
close.