191. Marius à Javert

hours & minutes

après minuit,

your call

dings

several times in my

barely lit

apartment

smiling in spite of myself –

I check and answer

other messages,

stalling before I answer yours

yet –

out of fear, and

excitement

the purple & white

square

glows sunset amidst

notifications

I check the little litany of

messages

once,

twice,

thrice -

still in

queenly

defiance

your photos

illuminate my screen

once more –

I imagine us together

by that twilit

lake, your

dark eyes smiling

into

mine

the first

touch of your

tender yet

strong

hand

hours –

minutes –

past midnight

I am ablaze and

afire with

pangs of new love?

infatuation?

or is it precisely

the mystery

that keeps us –

me –

enthralled?

is it simply

friendship you want?

my own crazed

heart spinning

imaginations and

prophetic

fantasies?

I think of at the love

my partner

and I

share

finally, a

deep and

trusting bond

safe and perhaps

not so

intoxicating

isn’t all love

a thrill at first?

perhaps I only seek

these virtual

sparks

which will always

dissipate

I muse on

love and

faith

in the darkness,

on options

and time seems

such a feeble

foe

to

intensity

buzz

buzz

goes my

phone in the

dark

beckoning,

taunting

innocent

conversation,

I tell

myself

April 24, 2020

Montréal, QC

154. Salon des Refusés

He sits beside me,
only seat at a
crowded
intersection:

Old –
what a horrid
word;
wrinkled up,
frail, and
gauntly
tall.

Why are you here?
I would like to ask,
not judging
nor rudely,
but genuinely
curious

Abstracts
flicker
flacker,
dancing ‘cross the
pixels,
zebra manuscripts
painted
in cathode rays

Treatment
Medication
Lifestyle factors
Genetic component

headlines

Headlines:
receding,
newspapers clippings saved,
lay study
summaries

And yet isn’t science,
isn’t research
a mystery,
as cryptic as the
things they
study

120. Bell A23C

As all good actors,
I act so well I forget
the role:

All of a sudden, I
abandon self and
reclaim you.

Only after the
trance I look,
disgusted at myself.

Copy of a copy,
designed artificiality:

false grain repeating on
false planks of wood;
modems glowing in their
green domains,

chanting mutely in the winter breeze

We are all the same
only I am clever enough to
copy, copy
for I am too afraid to
disrupt this elaborate,
sickening
suffocation

for I
must

95. memento mori

Forgotten smiles float –
suspended in the ether of
cyberspace:

Messages lay unanswered,
comments rest unread;
unchecked remains the
latest “news”…

Mementos of a frozen life:
smiles collected from adventurous days,
when we were young and
boastful –

Farewell, adieu –
a virtual graveyard left
unattended;
vines grow unchecked,
obscuring what was,
and what remains,
eternally
immobile.