Author: Joel Best

New explosions when the old ones still hang on church spires,

use us up to the eyes and ears. So we ignore. So we go and pray

in a grotto. After forgetting about lunch and then dinner. After

trading stories with the wind and learning its secret message

about death. Say and resay: this is a how you humans can find rest.

As we go belly-deep in a strangled forest, remember firestorms

seen in a lion’s eye. Follow the footprints of daughters not born,

never were or would be. Our breath fails. Our exquisite parts shake

loose, lost to the idea of being lost. As we set a fine table by the

monarch’s tomb and evening sky reveals its true face. We put all

our trust in the lightning that decorates our cheeks with chiaroscuro.

It puts our smiles are out of shape as we pretend at being boats in

a windless harbor.

saints in the shadows

send them a kiss

my face on backwards

blue cemetery light

wide open

accept january breeze

before this place

before this time

somewhere else

someone else

Not same; but are in meaning and

not meaning

and yellow hands and

penny-a-pocket, What? Or is it?

Or the tradition of analytic swans, their

spread of hollow calm.

Yes we are run. And come in

pursuit of frail concerns.

Our ears are wrapped

in gauze, alongside the pool,

frailed. Before

Jahweh’s exultation, lungs

peeled. Seem to be seen

as a struggle with

pulse before shut off the lamps

and wish for flame.

In spite of. At the bottom

of the world, supine

on beds of dire herbs.

Crazy-headed by the fountain

of slow-quick.

Lie there, you, a riddle under

dimestore sheets, such as washed on

the world’s last day and redolent

of tattoo breeze.

As fallen into soft lumps, part

and parcel, measured in rattled

shades, slanted to the sight

of not them and not when.

Hey there honey,

nudge and a wink,

shove me loose-back, put down

toe-to-top, roll thin lines with

that silly mouth, take guilty

gilded nourishment from a lord-god

not anywhere we can point to.

The voice of your pulse, a

hemlock whisper under my finger

and tucked into the mattress,

maybe. Where bitter-sided mites

nibble and invisible magnets

draw us together in release of

days. And what were you once,

a ghost kiting high on chill-bone

breeze. No care about cold or

height. Slipped by me across

ruined roofs, through bare elms,

the road a melting narrow. Past

the sign that read SLOW. Past

fields where sunflowers gamed

a path of no retrace. SLOW to the

never warm winter and flecks

in the fog pretending to be crows.

in pale moment     cut/half

midnight pictures     thread

them on string stolen

from the master’s drawer     days

counted out     go full

circle to draw pictures of red oceans

where horses pace out

minuets     borrowed/taken from

the celebration of

sunrise     prayers caught

in our heads like choral music    and

secrets in the caravan

dunes     their hidden

numerology     count by two’s

to eleven     count

back again long past zero     our

nameless sons lay their

cheeks     their lips

on the mudsill     their eyes

on cherry trees burn at the foot

of the lord’s mountain

like a face in the

mirror. like a face looking

back. but how

is that his look? how

are those his eyes

and cheeks and not a woman

bright under

vernal sun. she lies

by a crossroads. today

and tomorrow. come

far and far, and still far to

go before reaching

a peaceful river

and free

to sail away.

swallow panic?

wonder about ill-fated circumstance

when it’s more satisfying to paint

fields of bluebells?

we’re always angry with the

sky. but is that the sky’s fault?

and when longboats

sink into the sea,

when birds nest in smoke, is

that the time for us bow towards

the east with the grace

of eagles?

              know what               I know that

                                                                 sunlight never

       falls in neat lines even               when

it does

                                                                              after the calamity of

                     storms                when becoming

                                                                         a series of endpoints reaching

                                                             down the mountain

                                            the mountain that

               knows               what I

know that               discomfort is a

      concept                evolved

                                             by hope

                                                           in a church               whose corners

have been planed

     smooth

the church that              knows

                            what I know

                                             how perfection sells             itself

                                                                            on unlikely corners

                                                                                          everywhere and

                                        nowhere on any               map

                            we might scribble               while reeling from bad

                                                                             wine

when we lean back against the

overpass railing, collect raindrops

on our fingers and name children

never to be born. engage in

arguments with green lightning.

your obsession with electricity.

your love of atmospheric

molecules hellbent in disarray.

that connect us as diesels blow

by below in a rush of petroleum

wind. we load our pockets with

static flame. fall weightless

into forty years from now and

a remembrance of thunder’s

haunted soliloquy.

fly again     into the realm

of crows

bird-brained

and blank-lusted     taken in by their

glassy eyes and oily wings washed

by damnation thunder     becoming

(willingly)

a brief wisp

of the hellish weather

created by

sullen angels