Tonight I feel it more than ever.

I.

Earlier I found myself on a bench at Dupont Circle.
I can remember looking down; saw some chalk letters which read
PEACE NOW
And I thought to myself
This is peaceful
As those banners
With grotesque images of aborted fetuses
Loomed in the background.

I don’t know exactly when things started to go downhill
Although, arguably, I was upset all day
Full of fear of an obscure possibility
Which I knew I would not let myself carry out
So why was I scared of it, anyway?

But I was walking somewhere around R Street
And I went into a gallery
Beside Alex Gallery
Just outside, I met Alex
An artist from Spain
Alex had a piece in this exhibition
Which was for some reason in the sexually explicit room.

The piece was called Sorrow
It was an image of a woman
There were dark black lines to frame her
And they stretched in dark, dark circles under her eyes
I wondered how long it must’ve taken Alex
To write
SORROW . SORROW . SORROW .
So many times.

After that we went to dinner at a restaurant called Annie’s
And I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person there
It was a swarm of gay energy
Hot dogs were an apropos choice for just such an atmosphere.

I guess in general
I really ought to stop watching
Those films such as
Walk on Water
Because every time
I do
I start to feel kind of
Hopeless

II.

And now here I am
Paralyzed on the bench
In Dupont circle while
The world goes spinning around me
You can’t know
But I composed this poem
While I’m actually sitting here
I wrote it in a txt msg on my cell phone
Cause I had on other way 2 write it down.

I don’t know why I’m still sitting here.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get up again.
Everything’s turning
And here I sit
Somehow suddenly cemented
by loneliness.

III.

I tried to read King Lear, but I couldn’t.
I got distracted because everything was spiraling around me
--too fast to be still and to concentrate near.

IV.

A man’s dog just came to me out of the swirling mess. I saw him coming and spinning and I reached out and placed my hand on the dog’s head to stop them both and keep them here with me.
He couldn’t understand why the dog liked me even though I didn’t have any food and I don’t know but somehow this moment in which our lives collide shines in my mind and then here it comes, filtered down through onto the page where I’m scribbling other verses about finding beauty in amazing, mundane moments of everyday life.

V.

I saw a couple
They had a baby
And I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I looked over at them and all of the sudden there was too much love surrounding me. What can you do except to let it flow through you like in American Beauty? So it does—
Channeled out between my fingers in words
Passing a ring of seashells things shudder in its monumental wake. There’s nothing quite like it here
It’s like the biggest carousel in the world and it never is moving like the rest of everything.
Here is where I can come to stop everything and watch it all go by.