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As wear the rags of ancestors

in love with lunging knives.

Our children given to the earth,

unbathed. A surrender to submission

brokered by tranquil smoke.

What it has to offer,

instead.

Instead, the usual hyperventilation, are

we consumed by fractures,

time and time, time to serve dinner under the

stars?

If, then. Said to wear porous knots and wrestle with the

sea. How to find. How to wish.

How dead souls fly

from stories of unbuckled life. In the abbot’s hall, mark

off days with a red quill. And where are the holy riders who

carry saddlebags

filled with wind? The sound of their

tinny voices, the shrugged off aphorisms.

Look beyond, or aside. Tomorrow is made lawless

and left in a ditch. Picked clean by

wingless birds, in spite.

seven slim shadows     in love with

fibred twilight

guarded by trivialities

in sanctioned rooms     seated in limbo chairs

a process of geometry recombined

our gowns shout down the wind

cut us in two     the pieces

put together backwards

we’re secretly numb     vital organs astray

and piled in broken teacups

our hands filled with

+

signs

when the hands are used up

elbows

     Not the same, but are.     But conclude a dazzle dance and

confront eager tropes.     Encircle the caustic.     This, lowered

down to the ground where our ancestors

               lay themselves bare.     Their essence among ragged shirts.

     With the fear of bitter winds; look, look.     In the way of

ourselves.     In the way interrupted by signs and

sweet incantations.

     What, to taste old smoke.     Instead, however, tread lightly

because these are the days

                 of days, the days without

night, the days stacked too high for gravity to ignore.

     Left, right. above.     By default.     How will base enjoyment be

                 reinterpreted.     There, at midnight below the arbor

where time finds an impossible name.

i’ve forgotten your name     but

you’ve forgotten mine

we’re an echoing rush stolen

by the wind     the wind breaching

these walls     these walls rivered by cracks

and closing in on us     the us half-sunk

in the floor struggling

for breath     weary

and falling apart     as we always

fall apart     after losing

our names

stacked against

the garden wall     bent

by time

lost to touch     tarnish won the war

reduced

denied by lack of faith

faith in tomorrow

faith in our iron legs

faith in the reminder

of better days     of

comforting home     where

we could fall backwards

into plausible peace

throw away our shoes and walk barefoot

past the kitchen    converse

with broken glass in the sink      with the hope that curses

provide protection against evil     as the dark hours send out thinning

echoes     and us chewing on our thumbs     and us rolled in a ball

between hollow heartbeats     unluckily hungering and wanting

what can’t be had     to sound

consecration’s bell before fading from sight     and how many

times     and how many times

ask cobwebs for clarity     as yet ignoring the

upcoming finale and imagine bright

gully-flowers     blue for you     yellow for me     their summering

shape but autumn scent     and wrap the baby

in a shawl while arranging

mobius patterns in the folds     them and their freedom of

perception     allow any who truly believe to run through baily fields     past

the chapel cross     heard and held     a foreign word where

forgiveness arrives at twenty-eight

o’clock     where the voice of god tells us to board a black

vessel     push away from the abbot’s dock     scrawl chalk ciphers

on ancient deckboards in honor of blessed mandel-da     the

hours knit long ropes     we invent propaganda about being

rightly religious     black sunsets

in our eyes     and nothing new to see but houses set afire

by a priest in his felt hat

erect

a church of rigid prayer     kiss empty

our faith     wish for jackdaw’s

milk     the

patient affliction     to fly again

on ladrous wind beyond

a courtyard wall     to spite the

theory of unsight     beside

gray-edged daughters

but

the feckless cherubs     them and their nothing

wings     whose wracking

skirr     a goosy writhe     boil quill pens

and mysterious logarithms

on wrinkled flesh

and

our piney threads

our sleeping shrouds

pewl with orr-knots     insubstantial

dilly-dots hurriedly

scattered

were continuous in mantis ocean     when the

vitality thunder     the arrive of sky and

plait it raw-red until aligned with

shapeliness

              if what you see     instead resolve

a thoughtless instant     of time before the circled

trees     by storm’s advent or canter

with grief to the glacial whir

of gears     admitted to wheels within wheels     and

the moon with its heaving glance     stupid

in love and topped off with bitter cups

of heaven’s calamity

          walk the wander     silly boy     floodgates let loose

the warmth we shared as water fled     between gabled storms      that

burn the world’s roots     inside-out     you and me      in pursuit

through migrant shade

          with a magic telescope spy on thanatos     where’s the

sanity in calculating time     now scribble a face     now the

wrong kind of nose     how we hoped to see ourselves in yesterday’s

borrowed light     a scene written to completion     when

it became night     when we became spirits in the rain

counting purple shells.

          what’s the point in calculating time     it struggles underfoot

with the hint of dry-rust     hangs on our ink-stained

palms      a cinnamon scent of sand     the end result

of sublimation     what about     or about     or discover parables

in coins     listen with sharp ears to a foreign orchestra in

preparation of pre-hibernate myths