caffeinism404

[caffeinism404]

the feelings you’ll feel when your best friend leaves you for three months

i love these thursday afternoons

lazy on the couch

we watch the world

through your window

i’m in love, in a sense

with the way you smirk at me

always refilling my cup you say

one more,

one more.

one more never hurt anybody

and drunken weekend nights

is the only time you’re yourself

you say

“i love you too”

you say

“i’m so grateful you’re in my life”

and i eat it like it’s the only thing that will ever sustain me ever again

oh my love for you

would drown rivers into lakes

flatten mountains

oh my love for you

is competitive

it fights and claws through me

the dark side of my moon

my love for you

it emerges in the night

i lean over and i think

if i could only kiss you

if i could only kiss the soft spot between your collarbone and chest

oh my love for you

can i admit it?

i love you!

i love you!

[caffeinism404]

Day after my birthday

today i woke up surprised at the elation stirring in me,

unfathomably thankful

i was not born a jellyfish

or beetle or peach tree,

or another thing without a heart

i feel my heart beat strong

and listen to what it’s saying

what is it saying to me?

“i’m okay.”

“i’m okay.”

“i’m okay”

or maybe:

“hello.”

“hello.”

“hello.”

today it’s raining and i left the window open last night,

and for the first time in years

i am thankful for the rain

rain brings forth new life

and washes away everything

that needs to go

i leave the window open and stick my whole head out to feel each drop

thinking rain, please,

bring forth new life

and wash away everything

that needs to go

[caffeinism404]

May

regard me like a sun

i blister, i burn

radiating poison in a

thousand twisting tendrils

now hold out your hands,

to feel everything i give you

here

and here

and here

disease interloping

sacral nerve illness clusters

settling cancers

here

and here

and here

[caffeinism404]

do me a big favor please

look at us,

laying in the grass

in the sun, no less.

i look at you and think

“melt me down and spread me out on the sidewalk

cut me into twenty pieces, all bite size

and disperse them as stipulated:”

“one for you

thirteen for the holders of my heart

one for the rooftop where i lost myself halfway

one for bleecker street where i lost myself completely

one to seattle! i want to go home!

one in the hudson! home is a place that’s always on the move!

two for the basement printer and the third floor at strand, you know why.

one in a box to be opened only in the event that i find myself again.”

[caffeinism404]

prayer

no more of this sadness

that drips and drips and drips

drips slowly down from throat to stomach

slowly filling every crevice

acute pulmonary edema

drowning from the inside out

no more of this anger

that swarms in droves

swarms like hornets or locusts or dust

a hornet i am not

when I sting,

it pulls out my organs too

no more of this passion

that rises in an all-consuming wave

rises like smoke from the fire, signaling,

smoke from the cigarette

we pass back and forth

as if it makes it healthier

i want to become a river

that’s moving forward always

moving forwards and holding onto nothing

forward lies the path,

what’s behind is already distant,

almost gone.

[caffeinism404]

April

in the morning

out my kitchen window

one pigeon sits and regards me sidelong

as i fill an empty pint glass up with water

somewhere here

there’s an understanding

between the bird and me

and

on the street below

someone is screaming

someone is fighting to be heard

barely audible over endless siren cacophonies

and

every night ends the same

shotgun curb strike soldier sprays

flecks of blood on the pavement

eroding myself from myself,

sacrificial handover

and

all i can think is:

when i die please don’t bury me

a seed planted in darkness

could never find the way up

[caffeinism404]

About him, again

yes, this is life.

he holds you by the throat and you arch your back, silent, bent like when you came into this world and you count the seconds until it ends.

there is a violence in passion, lights off, no love here.

he does not look you in the eyes.

he holds you by the throat like the fisherman used to do with trout in the mountains, and you don’t stop him, because isn’t being alone worse than whatever this is?

look, there you are, on the rooftop.

look, there you are, facing the stark light of the city around you.

[caffeinism404]

I truly hope you

Never understand this grief

That rots from inside

[caffeinism404]

December

i barricade myself within myself, eyes open to ward off imminent attackers at night in the form of dreams.

it’s always the same. you and me on the beach and you always leave, leaving me staring at your footprints in the sand.

in the present day, you make this mark on my hand, one letter, to signify your name.

(there’s something starched about it, pressed in the sun, like my mother used to do to my shirts when she’d hang them in the backyard to dry.)

eyes open to watch the sunset and then the sunrise, no sleeping on duty. some days i feel like a tiger, striped back and forth with shame. tiger in remission, pacing around a cage i know was made a long time ago, with pieces of iron i collected in my back pocket, slowly, slowly.

[caffeinism404]

november

in germany they say

“du fehlst mir”

which means “you are missing from me”

and it’s true

you are missing from me

it’s like a a lung cut out from my body

rib broken from the cage

i can’t breathe

you are missing from me

what do i do?

i swallow my heart back down into my stomach

the parties keep going

the bars stay open

the circle keeps turning

[caffeinism404]

post dog apercu

in the gunmetal mind

a sonorous basso says lousy fink bastard

the cynical yawn is contagious

glum on the download

syncing with a cynic can be bleak

statistically

unlike the optimist

the gig ends sooner on a sad model

trust is for suckers they say

in the third century b c

this movement flourished

ok

so faith took a beating

decades ago

sunk like a river stone

what we need is awe

the epic unfolding origami telescope

that looks back in time

when the first tribal campfire switched on

so

so

so

far

far

far

from machiavellian musicals

maybe on their deathbed

they think

people are wonderful

a life of negative bias

ending with an incandescent full stop

the tiny human

in their cloud brightening

geo engineering parasol in space

the tiny human

a tower of walking salt

badly hinged

a pub raffle scotch bottle

tilting in its own drunken cradle

sunset the stylus

refuses to let go

gets into a staring competition with the skeptics

panning for hope

now we’re getting brighter

swaps wisdom from a borrowed brogue

everleigh the postcard made it late

turned it into night

turned it into a haruspex universe

& the stars

I saw omens in their entrails

impound under the overpass

I’m a car

barking its alarm like an orphan

find the humans

ninety eight percent wolf

grappling in the margins

they belong to the word for damaged creatures

rise you fever of rays

delicate as walser’s handwriting

make a nebula to mark the occasion

©️david sichler

[caffeinism404]

While we’re on the topic…

you and me’s like

that one documentary with a dozen sea turtles that just hatched crawling their way to the sea

and it’s already clear not a single one—no not even the one you were rooting for,

the underdog, runt of the litter—

is going to make it.

like knocking your glass over at the bar, (everyone groans) ,

like every door that closed forever from one imperceptible gesture,

over before it even began.

[caffeinism404]

October again

the vase shatters, one million puzzle pieces,

everything ends.

you looked at me once the way someone looks at the horizon, eyes narrowed, hand up to shield from the sun.

you don’t look at me at all anymore.

well, i could never picture it, you seeing my photo on the wall and thinking:

“yes”.

thinking: “this is the person, out of all other people, i’d want to be trapped on a desert island with.”

so maybe it’s for the best.

[caffeinism404]

Astor Place, 9pm

looking at me sidelong, knocking his arms into mine, he says he wants to be just like me one day

i say nothing, i walk further ahead and count the window panels in the apartments above us.

i’m thinking.

you could die driving on the I-90 in a thunderstorm or drown in a grain silo. you could die out on the street at 8am and then one day even the deepest grooves of your existence will be worn out of the pavement.

short silence, then the curtain drops

what i mean to say is, i look into his eyes and i only see futures

what i mean to say is, i’m tired.

[caffeinism404]

aftermath

i hide out for days and chew endless basil leaves but it’s never going to be the same!

and furthermore it’s bitter.

don’t let me forget this:

your involuntary gasp when you saw the caravaggio.

you held my hand and complained about the heat

said that i was giving you hives.

and that dawning of frustration in your eyes every time i didn’t understand what you had said.

i’m sorry!

i’m sorry!

let’s circumvent natural migration patterns and head north this fall;

to nip these issues in the bud,

and to appreciate the rain in remembrance of those awful (so dry! so empty!) florentine midnights

[caffeinism404]

with you, on the street, rooftop, train, and highway…

i can’t help but wonder: what’s the best way to connect land and sky?

both painters and lovers tell me wet on wet-i’m not so sure i’m convinced.

your lips on my neck, i’m not so sure what to make of it.

touch my forehead, feel the insanity rooted deep in my genes, passed down from myriad diseases branches. it bucks and shakes, it’s like

hot rubber on hot tarmac oozing all the way down I-90, 200 miles-per-hour-screaming-california-i swear-to-god-and-the-cops-never-seen-a-thing

hm.

you pull me into you and i try to kill the blistering elation your tenderness evokes. didn’t i cry out “im not meeting you on that shore”?

my ego ignores my own declarations. i can’t help it. my confidence a faux prewar façade, oh, i confess it to myself under the cover of night and beer,

i want to be cared for so badly.

i can’t help it, for you i fold into myself,

small enough to fit into your wallet or pocket. flat enough to slide in with your kroger points card. conveniently camouflaged, or easily misplaced.

well, so what? if this is defeat, where is that final howl? my lungs feel weak and you’d never hear me over the engine beneath us. can i tap your shoulder instead? will you recognize that last vestige of spirit in my touch, hugely arrogant like the roar of blue-dawn yanks in days gone by?

before i work up the nerve to ask, it splinters, and oh, there it goes.

gone in the tailwind.

[caffeinism404]

The Trip Back

oh the betrayal

my eyes must have shown on that horrible morning, when i woke you up.

leonine March outside the window, unflinching downpour, did not drown out the leering desperation i prayed would not creep into my voice.

i left alone, little storm cloud, bottled and stoppered and rolling quickly down church ave.

then later, on the bus,

i’m red-hot and fuming up ocean pkwy. how can i not wrestle with it? you bruised my body and my ego, face contorted as with acid or rage, or heartbreak.

in battery park i clattered down and out and turned myself homewards.

staring into the eyes of ten thousand fatigued commuters too tired to care or notice i swallowed tears and cried out instead:

i will not look backwards i am on the express track now

i don’t care do not come near me

i bite

i am not the brooklyn bridge or the carey tunnel nothing between us connects and even if it did i am not meeting you on that shore.

then, the 4 to union sq tosses me to and fro, salad spinner journey. my body is sea glass in the ocean. i tumble out on 1st, all smoothed over. okay.

okay. i make up my mind:

i am grateful to have known warm toast with butter and slices of dried orange, so holy, so devoted.

and i am grateful to have known you.