it begins with this

it begins with this, zen monks’ franz kline-like circle strokes

signifying the void, corrugated cardboard lightning bolts

marking the shift between a dream and awareness

of a new day, the realization that I had missed an appointment

I had made at my bank, a phone call, breakfast,

and a ride downtown with rochelle, she so nicely dressed

I take her picture before the brick wall of the bank,

after using the versetel, isolating there and setting aside forever

a seemingly arbitrary piece of my life.

I browse at bulldog and then wait at dancing goats

while rochelle’s being interviewed at town tubs.

though she would not know until the next day

that she had gotten the job, when she meets me and we eat at otto’s

the atmosphere is celebratory,

even if more from relief that the interview is over

than a confident feeling about its outcome.

we drive to the black lake boulevard seafirst,

where I talk with my investment account representative,

who had returned there, to her true office,

after I had failed to appear for our meeting that morning

at the downtown branch.

then we go to evergreen, where the weights on the scales of my day

subtly shift and change my outlook from an even gray

to the emptiest loneliness, a cochleate black

characterized by desperation and pettiness.

I’m filled with nostalgia for the freedom and innocence

of my first year here, as we walk across red square,

but, just like every other time we’ve come to campus,

rochelle glowers with a resentment toward the place

I always guessed arose from some

unhealthy working class dubiousness

of middle class values,

and I feel guilty for my unempathized experience

and the still resonating happiness it produced.

we don’t argue, but our appreciation of each other attenuates

until within an hour, though we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves,

it amounts to indifference.

I use the internet to research the “‘hustler’ vs.

jerry falwell” supreme court case, my interest in which was piqued

the week before when we watched the people vs. larry flynt,

and rochelle does something I cannot now remember.

she checks her email or emails her friend dave

or does something else, but, in any case,

she’s soon through and ready to go,

but I am not and her waiting makes me anxious

and unable to concentrate or enjoy my research,

so, not as a courtesy, but, rather, as a way of clearing out

my psychic space, I tell her I’ll meet her at home.

I want to be alone because I feel worse than alone

in her presence, but, once she leaves,

I’m fettered by a nebulous sense of self-imposed pressure,

the air grows close, I can’t relax, and suddenly

I don’t even have my own company.

with thin enthusiasm, I turn to the main task

for which I came here, my ace investigations

spy on another agent mission.

I had been the facilitator at the last meeting

and had proposed, as my activity, that we each

spy on some unwitting other agent,

to hone and bring home

the detection veneer on our artists collective

we all profess to take seriously.

the names of all agents present were put in a hat

and, though some people included a couple clues,

the only words on the card I pulled out were “kaz femiak”,

the agent name for forrest martin.

I don’t really know him, just as I don’t really know

anyone else at ace, except for rochelle and dave,

and, in truth, I had proposed this activity

for the same reason I had joined ace in the first place,

to get to know people and to feel known and accepted myself.

sitting now in the unrelenting fluorescent ache

of the computer lab of the college from which I graduated

almost a year ago, young students all around me

flush with the promise of these, the lynchpin years of their lives,

I feel pathetic.

I know that, no matter how much I turn up

on forrest, his friends, all the other agents,

who barely even speak to me outside the meetings,

will still know him better, and will find my report on him,

if anything, only cute.

faced with this semi-conscious knowledge,

I turn to the task itself for a sense of satisfaction,

my realizations and frustrations making my vision myopic

and almost furious, but, after several hours

at the computer, all I have are a rough map

showing his hometown, evergreen, colorado,

in relation to golden and denver, and a printout

of its civic vital statistics.

failure torqueing me from the periphery,

like a storm of which I am the eye,

I run across red square in the dark

and catch one of the last busses off campus.

I had had no hope of actually spying on forrest in person,

because I didn’t know what classes he was taking

and the school wouldn’t give out that information

and because his home, the suburban oasis,

had recently broken up

and now I didn’t know where he lived,

but, on the bus, I strike up a conversation with mary waters,

an infrequent ace agent and one of forrest’s ex-housemates,

and, naturally, as if she knows I need it, she describes to me

the location of his new home.

two blocks down decatur from harrison,

one block to the left after the suburban oasis,

the next right, and then the little house

tucked alongside a bigger one is his.

I say good night to mary, get off on harrison,

and set out, with a rising heart, to claim my own salvation,

life’s placebo and panacea, the facile resolution.

I walk to the designated block,

peer past driveways up one side of the street

and down the other, repeat this with more diligence,

and finally, with panic edging in, widen my search

to the surrounding blocks, but to no avail.

this has been my day, dark and abortive,

and I resign myself to it, just as I have resigned myself

to the general stagnancy of my life.

I turn to make my way back to harrison,

intending to catch a bus and be rid of all this,

when something familiar about a distant figure,

framed in a window set back from the street

and obscured by shadows and foliage,

stops me and makes me realize

I am now dealing with all I once improperly dismissed

from my life, or should have noticed about it but didn’t,

and that, if I don’t heed this moment well, I’ll still

be executing todays decisions far in the future,

unwittingly and in some convoluted manner.

the door opens and forrest, who had seen me too,

calls out to me and invites me in

and I enter, telling him I was on my way home

from a friend’s house farther down decatur.

I don’t mention my ace assignment

and, in fact, as time goes on I entirely forget it,

so overwhelmed am I by the close bright warmth of his house

and of his strikingly sincere friendship.

he shows me around and I am filled with happiness

at the place, vicariously and for forrest,

for it seems so ideal not only for what I’d want

if I lived alone, but for what he wants right now.

if has a large bedroom and a living room with just enough space

for a futon and a desk, a bathroom, of course,

and a kitchen whose quaint layout and details

reveal this place’s forties guest house origin.

forrest tells me about moving here from the suburban oasis,

his family coming to visit, what he’s studying at school,

his travel plans, and more.

and I tell him about recent things I have done

with dave and rochelle, the eye widens until

the storm is so far off it may as well

be in the future, and like nothing,

like sleeping and dreaming, forty-five minutes pass.

it ends with this, my spy on another agent assignment

completed here, in the form of this poem, two years after I began it

and set it aside, my real goal fulfilled as you read these words

and know me so well it’s as if you’d spied on yourself,

know me like an intuitive self-discovery you’re obliged to befriend

before it sinks away and ceases to flower,

know me and need me like any link in a community,

as I reflect back on the elation I felt while walking home

from forrest’s that night, looking down at the city’s lights

and loving everything in life, even what was to come,

as your wonder is threaded through mine and as one

they’re sewn to the way all things build up and then break, predictably

and suddenly, like the lines of a single expansive piece of poetry.