Last night, I write a little something not for publication, as the rain pours down outside into the courtyard making sticky smacky hollow sounds; and the rescusitated radiator heats my bedroom to the very point where sultriness parts ways with comfort; and the train doors at the elevated platform down the block chime, in passing, to conclude recorded messages whose firm white words for once are muffled by the gurgling in between; and upstairs Russians watch a program scored to highlight danger and excitement and suspense; and cats move about my bed or pace purposefully across that squeaky floorboard, drawing looks; and again I check the bedside clock against too late a bedtime--and there's still time: I write the word, Desire.
Why did I want to? As a way to make it end? As if to name were to dispel the meaning of the word and make dead weight: Desire: I've bagged it. Or else I wrote to leave this mark: How far I've climbed across this glacier! From this point I'm starting now and don't return below it--like a ledge on which I camp, half-dangling, and regard the view through noisy handfuls of trail mix. Desire: A lightless view of emptiness and rain; I watch the pewter-colored cloudbursts of my breathing pour away. I decide that I don't need to take an Advil, and that I will sleep, as I used to, in the nude.
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