poem for yesterday

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

— Nightclub by Billy Collins

Quick. Tense. Stupid.

I'm falling into all those old, bad habits again, the ones that make me feel sad and scared. Or maybe they come back because I'm sad and scared already.

I feel like a shipwreck.

I feel like I'm floating five inches off the ground.

I feel like a shout in the mist.

sick Sunday

Today I took a nap at 11 AM. I've been playing Simon and Garfunkel not too loud. Reading a book I loved in childhood. It started snowing this evening; I'm okay with it. There's a full moon tonight, although the clouds are too dense to let it through. I'm going to make a nest in my bed, and then I'll watch sad movies, then funny movies, and drink lots of tea with honey. Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow with a neck less sore and a throat less scratchy.

above the ground, pt. 2

Somehow it happened and I was flying east again, losing hours, days, watching the mountains fade away under me. Pike's Peak shimmered in the distance. It was tiny, the only interruption on the horizon. I thought about the last time I stood under that mountain. It had seemed so huge. I thought about the relativity of size, and of distance, and of time. Everything seems bigger from up in the air, even as it diminishes.

The sun doesn't set when you fly east. You outrun it. I watched the sky fade like watercolors, washing from blue to pink to gold to darker blue, all in one broad swath. The backs of the airplane wings shone, gilded.

Ahead of us was darkness. But as we flew headlong into it, the stars came out. First, below us, the scattering of yellow sparks; then, above us, the clouds thinned and the cold silver glittered through. The stars were as far away as ever, one hundred million light-years in the past. Below, whole cities spread out like tea-leaves at the bottom of the cup. To the people on the ground, we were just another glinting light, winking far off. Distance. Time. Relativity. We sailed on, sandwiched between the stars below and the stars above, and we were a star ourselves.

above the ground, pt. 1

to-do list for March

• don't get lonely
• don't get needy
• don't fall in love