Distance: Successive Portraits

Mons, Belgium

I.

All my plans to leave are slow,
but I'm a patient man.
Patient with whom, it's hard
to say.
Snow makes my shadow
indistinguishable
from my Self.

I paint.

I paint until I can see you again,
iridescent in the fumes,
plastic car parts as limbs,
your body
a cloud, off-white like thunderheads,

the kind I used to dream
I could walk
or run
or lie upon
without
fallling through.

II.
All my plans to leave

are slow, but I'm
a patient man,
since there are still
leaves on the trees, still fires
burning in the Interior,
& the sick haze
they make is a fever
dream,
of the sort I once had
ill in bed for days,
heat like a hot wax
creeping up my face-
this it it
then,
death mask,
features solidified-
& you
brought me what you call
your 'special drink':
lemon peel
& clover honey
& a shot of whiskey
in black tea:
Drink this
& I tried, blaze
in my throat like the taste
of you under
my tongue
the day you said I was the only
one to make you do that,
ever.

III.

All my plans
to leave
are slow
but I'm a patient
man & today
I smoked
the last
cigarette:
Marlboro Lite
because
you always told me
smoking kills
& here I am
chewing peppermint
gum
poking today's paper
into
the fire
with the cigarette
packet, waiting
for the craving,
for the descent
toward madness
to start.

IV.

All my plans to leave
are slow but I'm a patient man.
I can walk to the sea from here,
& from there I can, & have,
cast out bottles,
with notes inside, sometimes,
& other times with scraps
of sheet metal, or paint scrapings,
or bits of wire wrapped in copper,
or full of the shavings
from a fiberglass boat hull.

I thought you might like
them, & I'm not good
with words.

Only with my hands.
Only with them wrapped around
a welding torch, or a paintbrush,
or the stubs of black pens,
the ones I used to shade your hair
in that sketch.

Most of the time, I toss
the bottles out
full of my hopes, which I rest
on you,
& these bottles are full
of nothing, of nothing at all.