Postal Code
What is the address for the stars?
On street corners,
I am punching old numbers into a broken
cash machine with its empty dollar lungs.
The satellites stop over heavy cloud.
They cannot pinpoint your curling eyelash,
the laughter in empty corners, this map
of a cartographer’s wet dream.
I am standing on the outside of quiet alleys,
knocking on closed doors of skin. Your body
is no compass;
it is all deserts
and solitude.
Where do I leave a message?
I am writing letters
and forgetting where you live.
It is raining too much these days,
bodies need bodies to stamp dreams on.
I am listening to a piano playing itself,
a chromatic beachcomber picking minor
seashells;
we roll like
dissonant waves.
I sing to an empty house.
What is it about some songs?
They make you want to wail with them,
the chorus a wound up engine screaming
night, an angry riptide, drowned hearts of
a scarred universe where I am
playing on these four chords, some found
melody stolen from the throat of a bird.
I would like to kiss you,
to give you all my attempts to speak,
but I cannot find the way to your mouth,
and your words spill out like a nest,
twigs and leaves
building the language
of a different city.
No wonder I cannot find home.
