Does he have a face memorized
without the wanting of memorization? Is that
an argument in our ears? On a day more than
a day, reached with finality. His fingers
are molten,
we’re the bastard children of ghosts.
His words, you say the strangest things. Collapse
on us. Or us on him. Or everyone in a state of
sideways slant. By that time as events rapidly
evolve. At that moment when
we wear clay gowns and wade in a glass
pond, anxious to drown.
us fine.
always fine.
immerse in smiles.
fine smiles.
immerse in
fine music,
waltz us finely through
fine days. across
fine halls.
fine rhythm,
fine dance,
fine us forget
fine smoke in
fine air.
fine us forget
fine children
running finely
into the heart of fine
fire.
us throw them
fine kisses,
fine children wave us
from fine flames.
fine in a state of
forever fine.
fine them.
fine us.
just fine.
stare through
cracks
in the glass and
what in hell
went wrong
with the
history that
promised us
peaceful gatherings
under courtyard
trees where
we rest
in sad chairs
against the garden
wall compose
love notes
to absent
ancestors drink rum
surrounded by
thistles whisper
in candlelight
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?
