Fragments

it's raining in Moscow and
I love you. the city wind
cries out for you and
I'm falling off a bridge
towards the black waters of
Canada, clean and freezing, I'll
die with no solace because
back in New York your
apartment is filled with my
things, mementos that will haunt
you, remind you why I was
drinking in Toronto while you
decided that Moscow would be
charming this time of year.
the snow covering the peaks
of the cities I've loved you
in, the caverns where I lost
you and the bridge where
I died, graveyards of glass memories
for you the living, the ones
in Moscow and Toronto and New York
and for those in transit, the dead
freezing in the cold arms of the river.
I'm dying in Toronto and
I still love you.

Poem for a New Year

somehow, none of it matters;
the wine, the company, the new year
itself, crystalline moments before
the world is shattered by the normalcy
of tomorrow and the realization that
it will happen eventually.

on 30th Avenue, none of that matters;
the women are smiling drunk and
I am smiling back, the moon
clearing our cold hearts, brushing back
the darkness,

The Girls Who Trade Their Love For Art

wear tiny lockets, filled with tiny secrets,
like spiderwebs being pulled from their throats.

The good ones buried under cigarettes
and black coffee, dug up from their graves
in rented Victorian houses, the places where
sunlight refuses to sleep, cradled by darkness,
the musicality of their voices -- ruin.