Your son, my father, wanted a picture of me to put beside your bed in case some spark of recognition might come to you, so this is what you get, a picture of me as I am.

wow, how long have
I been here, how
long have I been
curled up in this
ball watching meat
drip from my bones
and slither silver
liquid anguine in
ever-tightening
concentric circles
around my blue
deflating head?

I remember the
skull from which
the flowers of
flesh grew and
covered the
ground so soft

I begin to remember
the smell of a
dream I had in
your strange and
large empty bed

my dreams seemed
borrowed from the
apartment itself,
from the building
that watches us
twitch in our sleep
and cry out names
of people we've
never met and I saw
it all from every
moment it leans
against itself in
the summer air and
sighs from the
foundation rocking
us like the unborn
bound in its gut

I walk the
sidewalks you hung
over your wrists

I sit in the dark
of your basement
where small animals
came to die alone

a mother of bricks,
of AC fluid and the
scolding of roaches
who told us that one
day we would be
princes just as they
are and maybe in our
dreams we believe it,
that we could crawl
on bold black legs
and eat away the
insides of this
world until it was
just a shell for us
to sleep in, just
like this, like those
of us who peer
through mortar like
barely open eyelids

I could stir through
the night until it
was one tepid pool
of sweaty sheets

I could grit my
teeth and kick away
the lightness of
your touch, but
there's something so
soft I didn't see it

these are not my
dreams, the footsteps
in a slow pour
through the ceilings
and floors, the
ineffable hum of
electric things piled
up in dark corners
of organs leftover
from the 1920's or
or 30's or whenever
she was a child, a
brick tossed through
the sky, a brick that
has chosen now to
land and crumble

maybe some phantom
of youth creaks up
your stairs at night
and knocks on one
of your many doors

maybe I'll howl upon
your roof for every
moon you saved for
later until they
built up so much
you couldn't see
past the gray-white

they call it
Alzheimer's, but I
think you just
forgot what it's
like to cry for the
continuity of life's
many absurdities
and now you can't
even cry for the way
the inhabitants of
our dreams scurry
about in their
little compartments
as if they were just
one and not a
multitude of dramas
buzzing away in
little glass boxes

at least cry for
me dreaming of
myself through your
vacant window eyes,

and tell me why it
is I am sleeping
inside your dreams,
remembering lives
you've forgotten