I promise myself again and again to forget,
write it on calendars, make deadlines for un-knowing you.

But stealthily
I make myself a liar.
I swallowed you
so wholly and can't purge you and oh the shock

of remembering.

copyright 2006
b.lipton

I think immediately,
have I forgotten him?
not having expected this unfamiliarity.

how this closeness.

afterwards, not undone
but not made, either.
afterwards, regret is not a word but a thing,
which climbs after me into the bed,

tangling my hair in its fingers, breathing my breath.

copyright 2006
b. lipton

you, alive. how alive you are ( Read more... )

We call occasionally ( Read more... )

Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted a loaf of bread. At first, he hardly knew he even desired the bread, but as time went by his hunger for it grew stronger and stronger ( Read more... )

Out here, I sit inside of alone.
For moments I can create you
and believe wild things;

Then I am too untamed to know
if I am trying to remember, or to forget.
Still you are there when I kick slush
on the post office sidewalk,
and mail boxes to someone else,

and did you follow me, or did I bring you here?

copyright 2005
b. lipton

But then she said
perhaps
if I had loved you less?

copyright 2005
b. lipton

We are never reborn ( Read more... )

What! Do I love you?
But this vestige of care
will leave ungrown,
spread forth buds but not if I can say stop.

copyright 2005
b. lipton

By the time I lock myself in ( Read more... )