“I know the sound of one hand clapping”

“I think clapping is how mourn.”

“Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love PoemMy left hand will live longer than my right. The riversof my palms tell me so.Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finishat the same time. I thinkpraying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I thinkstaying up and waitingfor paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension thisis exactly what's happening,it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamicsof mournful Whistlers,the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone. Here I havetwo hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your backto rest my cheek against,your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.My hands are webbedlike the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezedsomething in the wombbut couldn't hang on. One of those other worldsor a life I feltpassing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's bellyshe had to scream out.Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever.”

“Who are you to judge the life I live?I know I'm not perfect-and I don't live to be-but before you start pointing fingers...make sure you hands are clean!”

“I wish that for just one time you could I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes... Then you'd know what a drag it is to see you.”

“Is it possible that that's all maturity is? Speaking better? Is it possible that everybody in the world, is just a dumb, stupid kid acting like a grown-up because they can sound like one and look like one? It almost seems easy.”

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands”