Each Tunnel Like A Vacuum: on reading Eric Grant’s work, circa 2009

In one line, from October 2009, you asked if life were worth the marathon. Well, I’m not going to answer that
For you, though I can negotiate some semblance of balance
Between you and I on that subject.

I am coming closer to the roses, you see,
Each tunnel like a vacuum
Expresswaying me halfway across the hemisphere and sometimes
The mere thought of a new currency tramples me. I cannot seem
To shake the wilderness’s wildness from my mind, it is un-understandable,
A fuck in a foreign language that is gone far too soon.

I remember the days when we apologized to mirrors and these
Are not those days. Sure, things still explode,
But something is always exploding. No longer is there a fear of faking
The fall so I can get-back-on the hero wagon and carry the horse.

Here’s the honesty I promised you years ago,
draped in courage-blood:
You can’t strangle a moment until your fingers fall off. You just can’t.
Each one will pass standardly and, unless you fight it,
Each voyage will feel vacant. I’ve fought it
For you, and each speck of our shared future’s history.

The best moments, though, I can tell you about those:
When beauty passionately and nakedly sits stagnant
and my (American) blue eyes watch our own smothered plans
lie flat and stretch over miles and miles and miles
until I cannot see them anymore.