I.

Previously, I resided in New Haven.

Beneath rust-colored cliffs
I slept and ate.

At night I might crawl through the morass
of ocean-side marshes, catching minnows
and shiners in my teeth. 

But it was weird and tiresome;
actions became symptoms
of something like addiction,

need for routine paired
with an inability
to avoid the inexcusable. 

Aside:
When I was young
I saw a man dead
on subway’s tiled floor,

pool of blood
deep crimson black,
surrounding asymmetric.

Later:
eighties bled to nineties
then blurred out of focus until
the next century

I grew older and
my stupidity grew and
my calm dissolved in a still
dark pool of quiet discontent

Then,

I sought bucolic discothèques
crossed rivers fat frozen cracked
slept in inappropriate spots
yearned for inappropriate things

I had to leave my life behind.

II.

In April, the trees
have leaves; the nights
seem unsullied,
airy. 

Crickets and cicadas
chirp and purr throughout
those nights; and I,

sleeping beneath
the trees and upon
the grass those bugs inhabit,
dreamed dreams set

to frequencies
of the soft vibrations
of their verve.  

I slept
outside, in woods along
quiet highways, in beds
of primitive ferns,
of feralized grasses. 

Civilization waned, nature
waxed.  The road became
like something left behind,
society’s wake, asphalt
game trail.  I,
reverse-hunter,

followed it away from
humanity’s den, moved
toward the limit,
exercised
the asymptotic. 

How far can
one go into the forest,
I wondered stupidly.