Any news?

You could ask me how I am, but would you want to know?
I could tell you I am learning Recuerdos de la Alhambra
on my dad's classical,
playing it four or five times over
every day for the last
several weeks,
still not getting it right.

I could tell you I just started a book called Tinkers,
and that I bought it because I liked the cover,
and it won the Pulitzer prize,
and the first line depicted a man hallucinating to his death,
and that I said to myself,
that's what I'm doing--I need to read this book.

I probably won't tell you I've been
high or drunk every night for the last month,
and that I was looking up the
symptoms of Schizophrenia today
because I'm losing my mind.

I would tell you that today I'm sober and plan to be because
fleeing one monster, I run into the arms of another.

I could tell you I wrote this in blocks of prose
and later broke it up into lines
the way we tore up stale white bread for the ducks
when we were children.
The way a sword beats a snow shovel
(this is how poems are written)

I wouldn't tell you that I still think about you,
but in a different way than before--
like an idol struck dead in a car crash or drowned in a lake.
That sometimes I catch myself missing you,
and wanting to go back.
I would certainly leave out that what's driving me mad these days
is that we are self aware, mature adults and that
we do not go back. Never.

I wouldn't tell you how many times
I've been to your funeral and cried
over your framed portrait, surrounded by a bed
of dried petals.

That I have dreams where I touch you,
and wake up wanting to die.

That I want to preemptively kill the guy you end up with next,
hoping that he's the last, and that he'll make you happy,
because frankly I don't think you'd survive another.

I'd never remind you that I know you in a way no one ever will,
hiding from myself that someone will know you in a way
I never will.

I might tell you I'm done with being afraid,
and I'm learning how to be brave.

I'd still deny the power I know I can have
over the other sex, but I'm afraid of what I've let it do to me.
I have cut the heart into too many shared pieces; now
wondering when
these Best Years of My Life
will be over.

That, generally speaking, I am ashamed.

I want so bad to tell you that
my dad's hometown Ishinomaki,
the town where he grew up,
the town where his brother and mother live or lived,
has been swallowed by the earth and sea.
That it's the first time I've cried over a natural disaster.
That thinking about it makes me sick and
turns these dark days darker.
That rifling through Google Person Finder
and seeing the photos of those with
'information that this person is alive'
just make the
'information that this person is missing'
even more heart sickening.
That my grandmother and uncle are among the unnamed,
possibly one of the thousands of bodies washing ashore,
swollen with seawater.

I would eat up your cursory comfort,
and later wonder what it would take for
you to care about what is coming out of my mouth.
That it isn't so hard to love someone by listening.

Hoping I will have myself reasonably together before any more bad news.

Looking forward to good news.