and hearing

the song
(which you might well have hated)

you are in both my mind's eye

and my body,
doing your distinctive
dance

somewhere between

hiphop (long before we called it that)
and
raving

(before we called it that either),

x-ed out,
rolling,
a place where
you didnt actually need
INGESTED chemicals
to take you...

you've inhabited
both
my mind's eye
and my body
at such times and tunes,

recalling now (as i haven't in so long):

the night at nell's with you and jean-,

the night at nell's with alexandra and sarah


(say hi to her for me)

the night at danceteria

a couple nights
when it was empty and silly and
dark
(and inexplicably beautiful

in a way the swamp never was)
at the place

on three mile harbor
'just-pre-season'

all of which seem so much
like dreams
that couldn't possibly
have a realworld component

and how, yet,
(although you resisted becoming
fully e-'d--
as i so much wanted you to--
another 'too obvious' way of connecting, i guess)

this feels like the journal i have never
kept (or wanted to)
though not 'to me' but so you could

SNEAK
to discover secretly
the things
i would and did say to your face

and as clear a way as any
to put concrete messages on your board

(yes, haoui tried at least 3 times, and
you know i would have helped you--did, sufficiently
that i was accused of it anyway,
in that too,
thus it couldnt be the statement you
wanted:

you were not forsaken.

you were never forsaken.

you will never be

forsaken

however much you thought you desired that

you merely imagined you
wished you were....)

that you may now check
in ways you never would have
were you
here

on this side
still
struggling

behind your own
back.



you don't have to
anymore

stop.

okay?