200words.

For my brother

When you were small
Dark hair baby fine soft
The first day I realized I liked you I kissed you on the head over and
over again
Mom and dad have the pictures to prove it
You smelled like apple juice

Dark hair in a bowl cut
Bangs framing your face
Exploring in the dark of the basement
Trying to keep quiet and scaring ourselves by keeping the lights off

Dark hair in a skater cut accompanied by big jeans and big t-shirts
Driving in the dark from a friend’s house we’d talk and
I’d revel in how much I loved you and
How lucky I felt to have you as a friend, not just a brother

Dark hair mixed with bleached streaks
You were a little crazy
As all first years are at one point or another
Coming to visit me at the coffee shop
Just a short walk from your dorm
To drink coffees and spend a little time
Catching up

Now
You have short short dark hair
A buzz cut interspersed with little patches of silver
Did you get those from dad?
No dark hair in the face
That looks so adult to me now

I was forced to attend a fundamentalist church until I was sixteen years old. One of the only cool things about fundamental crazy-town was going to church camp every summer. With the exception of all the Bible study, church camp was super-cool as a kid.

One summer when I was about ten I started hanging out with this blind guy named Dave. Dave was cool…and when I say cool…I mean he could take his fucking eyes out of his fucking eye sockets! No shit…he really did that. Any ten year old kid would pay admission to see that….I got to see it for free every night in our cabin. Dave had a braille watch, and folded the corners of his money…so cool.

One day I tried to explain light and dark. I was ten years old, and didn’t really know where to start. My explanation was this…(word for word) “Dave, what you are seeing right now is called darkness. The opposite of that is called light.” And that was all I said. I often wonder if Dave remembers my genius.

I met you when we moved to the coast. It was always at night and you were always with your gang. A howling tangle of black jeans, scarves, leather and hair, looking for trouble on the boardwalk. I followed you to the beach. Since when did my ego demand a response to every schoolboy challenge? it was your danger and annihilating eyes that kept me along. I had to find out what was going to happen. Being led astray is a delicious sensation.

We drove our motorcycles in the fog through the sand. You showed me your secret hideout and shared your dinner. They’re only noodles, Michael. I started to dress like you, wear shades all the time. I met you in the woods for a party.

Now you are one of us, you claimed, but that was never really true. Great self-indulgence requires great cruelty and I do not have the stomach for either. I do not want to hunt and feed. You say you tried to make me immortal. I say you tried to make me a killer.

Space is dark. Orbit the planet and you’re surrounded
by dark, even though you are receiving just as much
light. So dark is not necessarily the absence of a
supply of light.

Regarding the light that illuminates the planet
surface, its rays’ immediate origins are something
other than the sun. Daylight is what we call ambient
light; in bringing it to us, there’s more than just
the sun involved.

So the dark is not necessarily the absence of a light
supply, but rather the absence of an intermediary that
reflects and refracts, dispersing the light.

Does the (metaphorical) dark work the same way? For
its existence, does it, too, rely on the absence of
intermediaries between the (metaphorical) light and
the (metaphorical) observer? Does the dark in
someone’s personality indicate the absence of any
reflection, refraction (dispersion) of the light?

The physical characteristic that makes an object
appear dark is that it absorbs more light than it
reflects and refracts (disperses). Dark objects
consume more light than they disperse. Their
imbalanced consumption of light causes their darkness.

Does (metaphorical) darkness work the same way? Can
it manifest if a (metaphorical) thing consumes more
(metaphorical) light than it brokers?

the dark…

of your hair looks like ink clouds underwater

comes seconds before fainting

is better than milk chocolate

absorbs what it touches

sweet syrup of turkish coffee

thumbprint between stars

under the blankets, in the tent, surrounded by bendy woods

means more places to hide

time in the damp isolation chamber

broken by the lights of the fire sirens moving east down west
market street across the lilac-flowered wallpaper and back down into
blackness

bits of people that compel me

bubbles of warm tar my 5-yr old brother pops with the toe of his
ratty canvas sneaker

in late Beatles

lines of grout

clowning hole of our existence

halls in the Buhl planetarium

fills in the spaces between urban grids

with your mother moving in it, creeping in late from a dinner
banquet, bending down to kiss your sweaty sleeping forehead

rain, rein and reign

absorbs when it touches

skin around my eyes

narrow space where the horizon gulps air

heavy wheels of industry

tissue of the organs of my chest

tingly feeling you know somethings’ gone

spot inside your iris, expanding

replaced by light, or by breath, or absence of weight

threads under ice

not bright