[The man said starless], and: [It happened]

[The man said starless]

The man said starless. Which was another way   of saying compassless. By which he meant oblivion. The dock under which men   younger and older would meet each summer to release one another. The Greeks   would say it was both the giving of wings and the stripping off of them together.   But he comes back, doesn’t he, only to oblivion. There were times, he noted, when   a hierarchy was obvious, but also when it wasn’t. For both cases, there was moon   enough to see, slight, their hands shifting, the paleness of an open mouth or not   the mouth so much as the light it could enlist in that moment to indicate here,   and then, weightless, measured out, a glistening constellation spilled onto the sand   which was, in turn, a kind of mirror at their feet and some came to see this and only   this. He wished nothing on it. Starsomething. Light, dust. That portion of the song   you hear as koax koax— the drag queen singing something about cowboys   or heaven, how it used to be, how high the moon or smoke in your eyes, on the water,   in the shade of a pier at the dark end of the street—heard tonight as chaos chaos, that’s   all, that’s all, no more stars now, maybe.

[It happened]

It happened in a city and night and years ago   and there was no one there and this was the way it must have been, the white Honda that steered   itself into a future of glass, aluminum shutter enclosing the bodega and the thin man   climbing out, wobbly and ethered and without the customary wonder of he-   who-has-demolished-what-he-so- desires, approached you in the gait of a   courtier asked, How’d you feel about getting wrecked tonight, sexy?   tonight suddenly feeling not so much different than any night   you went out on that street, and searching, and saying no, as you say no to   this, now and forever, because not the stars, the few trees which nonetheless do   the job of obscuring them, you who never slept in that republic, though you   have told others you once did because it was fluorescent and superlative   and beautiful to say it, it did not feel stranger to you than an afternoon,   which is to say, from wanting to be he-who-would-be-demolished, but this   was not what was offered, and to this you say no, for now, thank you, good evening.