Missing Marc

Marc's only been gone a few days but I already miss him.

It's not the first time we've lived away from each other...

REYKJAVIK

I dream you pinned to ice in the sky,
informed by the lullaby of The Shipping Forecast
mything your pocket of floes
like a valve, open only at the bottom of the year
and clear.
After days in the dark and emptied gallery
I plumb Reykjaviks neither dawn nor lava fields
nor six am nor midnight, snow sanding me down to fatalist
contrails wisping in the pink of the airports false dawn.
You are the only flame in a capitol of night that could
pass for a dream of Duluth, neither awake nor sleep walking,
but one can get used to anything, you say with steam.
At noon the sky stirs, then pulls her skirts back over.
A pyramid of oranges in a window
shocks me like a flasher from the equator.
Your red hair is a fire I wish would burn me.
It could be any hour you want it to be.
Were drunk; thats waking up here. Lets talk.
I breath in the old
you, the boy I missed for years.
      The winters been hard. Back home we call it
      growing old, losing your hair, forgetting what spring break is,
      who Genet was and how to drink till close.
      The winter is a titty-fuck with a spare tire, a therapist.
      A boyfriend who doesnt love back.
Seeing you is visiting the museum of my life; I bloody my knuckles.
How did you find this pocket beyond Greenland,
beyond help, beyond gas and air.
I pass out with my arm on you like an untied string.
In the moonness of the arctic you drift off.

At noon in the blue snow outside the old peoples home
I puke up my hangover into a snowbank
and feel alive again. Pick up the little cat that licked
the pink splash of last nights salmon and beer.
You are cooking ramen in miniature rooms as I leave for Greenwich Mean Time,
a southern sun leaping from my mouth into blue opal.

2024