I feel blessed for this trait I inherited from karmic fire.
I will reveal it when hollow-eyed manuscripts are burned.
 
I get so lucky my drawer full of expired voters' IDs
survived etui's unbridled conversation w/ ennui.
 
I feel strangeness crawl like time in the machinery of space
& I'm headed for nowhere where nothing gets to petition
 
a Pondicherry dosa-wrap of the truth. Truth is: I'm afraid
of marriage. Feelings, for example, are like cities
 
pining for new souls in the streets. Feelings betray
for special reasons. One, for gravity to evaporate the other
 
graver thought. Second, paying attention to answerless
questions is what Jacques Derrida meant by forgiveness.
 
And like smoke, we slowly disappear for being gorgeous.
Finally, space sounds like maze, a garden in my brain,
 
only if it were to chase Gitanjali dreams. No one can tell
you how to be lonely. When you write a poem at thirty-two,
 
you think you're in the middle of a war. Nobody's war
but voices you scatter around parking lots as I sit on
 
the peripheral grass watching the moment watch you.    
And the center of it, yielding to the diameter of wishful
 
thinking, used to be your own patient wheeled out
for his afternoon sun. You cannot tell me how to be alone.
 
Nor can they brand a ceremony of signs & sleep
across my name. Truth is: I'm afraid of marriage.