Tonight

You're still glued to the bus-stop seat,
I pull you off it, "91 is here."

On Gray's Inn Road,
you again call the houses "so miniature,"
holding them between your finger and thumb.

On the double-decker,
you're still dozing off on the back seat,
asking me to wake you up when we get there.

As we get out, I'm still telling you to
"wrap yourself well, it's always colder
near the river."

As we walk below the Waterloo Bridge
and you turn to look at me, I am still
one-part longing, one-part fear,

wishing, tonight, that you were here.


(thanks to Daniel Titz and Dorian Lebh)

Beds

- there've been many,
and I've sworn all of them to secrecy,
hoping mattresses keep their promise.

The one in Stokey

in the house behind the
Abney Park Cemetery

to which my mother, calling from Lucknow,
had said - "When you sleep, do not lie
facing the cemetery,"

though, often
in the evenings

I'd look at our backyard fence
running against the 18th century graves

- where an angel, an urn, a lion,
all contracted in cement, kept
an Anglican hymn-maker, kept 17 year old
world-war veterans, kept a girl who
"left us so suddenly and so irrevocably
in grief" -

and I did not think it was anything
particularly serious to be
facing them while
I slept.

My German and Greek room-mates
often partied, "facing the cemetery."


A year later, the single-bed in King's Cross,

on the fifth floor,
floated above police sirens
and bus horns,

and was stuck to the right wall of
the room that I'd expressly asked "should. face. outside."

the hostel warden - this nice white guy - was surprised,
"you're the first one to ask for a room facing the road,"
"I like the noise," I said. I did not say I'm from a bigger city,
 I'd sooner die than face the "serene," that
little patch of green for more than a day.

He smirked but let me have my choice.

That bed afforded the view
 of Constable churches, of a Punjabi grocer,
a car rental and a Tesco,

and it was on this bed
where we managed to do it
for the first time,

using face-cream as lube.

Sometime that year,
the bed in your downtown house
near Battery Park,

that I knew only for a night
while visiting New York,

where I made plans which were
(presciently) smaller than my hands,

where I looked down into your city

where even
the parking-lot at mid-night
seemed unbelievable to me,

where the bed, holding my knees,
and your umber skin, as you slept,
told me that the tense of desire
is always the future,

one in which no plan survives,
no suture holds,
no love keeps,

one in which you leave me, always,
so suddenly and so irrevocably
in grief

that night after night
beds now
are of a kind,

that have very little to do
with sleeping.

Though my memory might be dim,

but I remember, the bar, the
walk back, him. I remember his
middle name spelled in gin, &
the evening moving on a whim.
And where the Caledonian Road
turned like a river, where the
lights of King's Cross limned
his black jacket, his short hair,
and his eyes as brown as sin.