Ninety minutes since dark, I do not expect the surrounding ice
to quit its hold nor do I expect you wearied at my door:
shoulders narrow ‘neath your dark green cloak.
You wouldn’t be dashed by stones at my door who take unkindly
strangers; flinging them knee to split knee. Dashed all strangers
take me less than notable, even addled as if they could win
a contest to prove their contention.
I have wandered, am neither here nor there;
you are where I left: sous terre,
roiling voices beneath your brow
and beaux who wrote with forced arm; not strong.
This is to say meet me where I met you first.
Where you stirred as I lowered myself over cliff’s edge.
A burgundy train I wore; you held me up by this.
Your great strength, a thing beside, a saviorial beast, loving me
I am the kind who need only be reminded of kindness
and with my All will pursue that quality in the new life.
The remembering one. You seemed to see this.
You lost your horse carelessly that day.
I am a dog wrestling with a big bloody heart
whose valves flubb to the very suck of hell.
Light footed night and by night welcomed.
Scuffing trees, I am sudden from paws upon windowsills, bark
rattling citizens inside the u-turn, sleeping in sweat-naped
sinistre. If the sleep catches a flash of froth-terrible jaws
in moonlight, they will have taken the present.
Each moon brights away.
Here’s to run where no street supplants rash brambles.
Low in the capacitor, taught on night’s perch.
This place, my outer heartland
where small stars hang before the punch is thrown.
When he went away to take the waters,
I was to stay and guard his possessions.
Some were on the window ledge and seemed about to fall.
No one was allowed to move them. I was not alone
and yet I had to keep the section still.
Red pickle dish, blue glass dish, and some green bees cast in
Romania were death is more than usual. They still burn
soft coal. The children at the river
will never be clear of.
Anyway I leave all the time
when late afternoon light aims over all the fragile objects.
This light selection saddens those who look upon it often.
The man who went away was likely to be worried that I’d leave
his objects charged with light energy.
From this they might project elsewhere, or break with pieces
scurrying all the way away.
This may be unreasonable of him but it was wrong of us to force
him off. To get well until his nervous tension is less so.
He is afraid we are forgetting him.
We say he is allowed one call a day
which he makes later each day to test for disappointment
when it turns out to be him.
Overt, one fast gasp in canyon grounds.
Sense wrecked storied scintillance. And where
some milling wise ones surprise the shy surround
by being too bright behind bars, tossing out sweet keys.
Shy here since noticed the problem to utter a sound.
Some day won’t hey relive themselves sincere?
Here asks odd angles to restrain a room
from letting breathing; save dying soon.
One chews one’s own wick down these days
to keep from arousing the sundry.
A light elsewhere buys bricks in copper caves
seeing lions pass out hungry.
Worm turned towards sword. Cut, each side died away.
It’s blood holds dirt down to taint tread broadly.
Someone sees these days as distants.
Someone comes crying for comfort; dark day’s persistence.
According to the parchment,
thin lines connect us through seas
deep enough for giant squid.
We know there are squid because their dead bodies wash up.
Otherwise, they ashew us; the squids do. Married to mystery,
God told them: avoid all gawkers.
Who are us; we are here looking and as separate continents
try to love one another though jagged coastlines discourage trade
and belabor analogies.
When I thought I was original I was wrong,
I was only alone. Near me, God said,
“You are here finally little miracle! My one and only!”
“Yes I am here!!” I said.
“No, not you! I meant,
She whose glee cannot be contained within a face!”
He meant the girl with the cleft palate beside me
she was hiding. A deep being hiding.
Excusing herself as humans do; creatures of shame;
it is difficult to escape this fate
We tell ourselves one thing,
people oppose it. The crusty world agrees with them
We are here. I am sorry. Always
In America: home of the freeze and land of the blame!
I am here similar to nothing. Some day I will be something,
something will become of the perpetual space,
the American mind which is like a clever simile:
trust me. It’s as blank as a blank.
I am broken free
all the way out and about-
In the Capitol
a star
between places where we meet while we are moving:
through blood, through lines,
we see stars, and breathe sky.