I.

Continual occupation and change
weaken one’s sense of one’s feelings
so looking forward to something  
– a dinner at Orchids for example –
can distract from impatience, the desire
to see you again, which may lead to
– which impression must I want to convey? –
boredom or disappointment since the future
might be considered a department store of choices,
luxury goods I want to own and use up. 
A black Armani suit for example, perfect
for the lecture circuit beginning in October,
or the cocktail hour I enter without you,
or the art opening where we go together
in our jeans.  Surely I feel something,
don’t I, a kind of ennui, impatience
at forgetting the location of the suitcase?

II.

My feeling this afternoon – the blue hour, no?
is like yours, or Billie Holiday’s as her eyes
roll up into that note we hear from the balcony
above the thump and below the machinery’s                 
back-up beep.  We feel something, surely,
on vacation from our continual preoccupation
with change.  Don’t we?  The extra rich ice cream
melting?  Peppermint panties?  Ads for pain killers
plugging into our anxiety exactly as arteries slam shut?
 

III.

You asked.  Here are my impressions.  Rushing forward
backward gets us nowhere.  We’re alone
with all these big possibilities.  Talk is expensive
but we can pay the bill.  Our waiter is drugged. 
The soup is delicious.  Pale beets, imagine.
These earrings of gold seeds and calcedony are lovely.

IV.

At four when I wake the door is still open
to the balcony.  Police helicopter?  No lights.
Fire?  Someone is missing?  A wind.
My heart is occupied to the tune
of the blades – thwup, thwup.  A mystery.
Thanks, Nancy Drew, but I’m sick
of preoccupations, appointments to deconstruct
the story shuffling through the SONY PSYC.
I can, you know, so well trained
nothing narrative escapes analysis.  Am I correct?
Am I cold?  How much do you charge to cuddle?
No wonder we like the feral cat who stays
only long enough to drool before fear
takes over.  Weak impressions
on handmade paper, the cold moon & stars.  

V.

You’re here but you’re furniture,
a leather sofa that springs open into a bed.
You could be anyone so long as you hold up the nightclothes.
We’ve had our chat over excellent veal
pounded sliver thin.  Yes, we’re both against war,
big business, wind power, and material goods from China
if they’re shoddy and poor design.  We agree
it’s best to stay thin.  Ghandi said eating meat
incites lust, didn’t he?  You’ve got mud on your boots.
In our house you’d have to go around or take them off.
Yes, I see they’re a fine design, leather gloves
for feet, durable and not synthetic. 
I’m tired.  Where did you say you’re going?
Shall we share a cab?

VI.

            Her “storytelling voice is just as strong as her drawing grammar.”  Alice on Lynda Berry

  Subtract one and you’ve got, what?
Half a talent?  Half a couple,
one of whom shoots the dogs?
We promise to stay put if they do
but how?  Something about big
machinery, a helicopter doing our work
on a tiny laptop connected to wind,
your weather blog?  Talk to me!  Oh, I forgot
our subjects, three restaurants:
“a table is an alter,” says the Talmud.
Twice a week we worship.  I’m sad
to be throwing out my storytelling voice
over pizza and beer, hoping you’ll deploy
your drawing grammar in a way I recognize.  

VII.

Once a time lapse is enough,
isn’t it?  My favorite suitcase is red
a portmanteau into which I stuff
the necessities for a good visit.
Seven day’s purge through the portals of the ear
means a stream still rushing on down the mountain
below this balcony.  I’m sitting here
this morning, thank God for the ascent
made by the cable car fifteen times already
if I stay put.  What are you doing?  Thinking
about me?  Alice goest to her room.
Travel without the beloved is travel in letters
on the page.  Is that it?  Never, never, never,
never, never said Lear over the body of his daughter.