Let me return to a series of questions.
More intimate ones.
"Swan Hair."
"Was there a murder nearby?
Talked about all year.
Less and less by you.
As you drove quickly past, others stopped to gawk.
Were you in love at the time?
Was your mother still alive?
Are you dressed now.
Therefore in public?
Are you walking home alone?
Is it humid?
Does it occur to you that while grasses blow
without anyone observing wind.
Relationships befall you?
Do you want to be aroused by words or does
that bore you like porn?
Are you, yourself, hungry?
Is there a sense that you're on a floating bed?
Do you think of yourself in an apartment
by the sea, winter, a few neighbors and fog
horns, early evening and the mood already gloomy?
Can you recall if anyone helped you?
Do you compare yourself to a passerby
in a loose white blouse and jeans?
Do others shut down nearer your power?
If I think of you, will I draw another breath?
Was there a melanin high season or a wall when it snowed?
Didn't the tray weigh nothing on your body
when your dearest woke you with a plate of toast and ginger,
lingering in the room while you dressed in tights, a slip,
and a mustache to be funny?
Did you laugh?
Do you forget?
When you made love and smelled of sweat and mint,
did you wake too early?
Did it matter?
Did you anticipate your birthday and the hundreds of people?
Were those slippers, tap shoes, heels,
and sneakers rarely worn, because you lay around
in a cloud?
Did people want you?
Were you scandalous?
Were you available?
Had you money?
Did you cleave?
How?
Were you valiant?
Were you furtive?
Masculine?
Did you suffer?
Do I know?
If you cried, was it a moment, an hour, or much longer?
Did you never?
Do I believe you?
Do you imagine your everyday life
as a frog or victim or swimmer or liar
or a pair of binoculars or a winning ticket?
Is feeling surreal like swan hair?
Was that your city?
Were you tired?
Was there shock?
Pleasure?
Was there water nearby?
Who cooked all afternoon who bicycled for wine?
Was your intelligence obvious?
Forgiven?
Did you put a hand in the fire?
Did you drive a car into the lake?
Do you want more of a story as a gift on a postcard
to a secret admirer?
As a guard against the fashion?
As a volume of trysts in a pronouncement of your politics?
As a whim?
As a monument to defeat in a moment
when the vanguard upbraids you?
For your time on Earth, did love shape you?
Is time passing naturally?
Brutal?
Does it make you think bravely of war?
Of the best of civilization in makeshift camps?
Was it a battle of time versus dream,
fought over a dug out of sheets?
Did you account for the dark plastic on the windows?
Did you sleep in your dress?
When did you become old or dead?
Would you behold what is tender, and still,
when you went in for a kiss and came out a magnifying glass?
Why go downstairs to read?
Weren't you listening to what was said?
Did the end of life make you sad,
so you couldn't write or think?
Isn't it when the strings are taught
you play with complete abandon?
Does no one hear?"