Clydesdales

1

Before you were born
poets subscribed to light

& later I saw the same
light come up over the street

where lovers cross
over to where the light
stops & starts

the light of conviction
in a stranger's eyes

an unfamiliar voice
on the other end of the line

It sounds like someone died, Bernadette says


2

Not a person, but a depression:
is there a difference? My friends
are my raiments & claim insistence
for my health, which (according
to Plato, not her or him) some toxic
substance endears me to write

So I'll sing not of what love means
but getting older only seems like
love if two people meet on the
other side

As if someone died, & in my desire
disappeared, swallowed up (alive)
for the sake of conviction--it's
always more convenient to die & return
to life, to accept the limits of
resistance (undefined)--& delete

erase her name, as if 'from my life'--
a spark of life went out
before its time


3

I thought I was burned out but I kept
on dreaming. Something revived inside me
that had already died. In my chest still
breathing passed out of my life, like the day
we heard Ted died & fucked all
night. It was the only way we could feel
alive, & keep on breathing, a wedge
between living & dying & eventually we died--
passing to the other side so we could
be with him.


4

I had a plan, more like an overview,
& see what happened. I'd love everybody
at the same time & if they didn't
like it--I'd see who was strong enough,
who was still left standing--

Ping, pounding her chest, says: you have to think
of yourself, also--

As if to remind me what I knew was
true--the baby on the bed, the song

about 'hope' that turned into
sorrow

I had a plan to plagiarize (as if
there was no tomorrow) what others had
said about love's insistence, but I
knew I had the field to myself--the
disparity between what others felt
& their resistance to thinking

what was left in the mind could make
it true

Everett Andersen