the doe
startles off
to the sanctuary
of an old february
and the sorceress
unshuffles her card deck
with a soft ploink
the sun drops
into the river like a water droplet
without so much
as a sizzle
the village need never know
the shaman takes in
the sacred flower
even on thursdays
the sphinx has forgotten
the answer to its riddle
now it eats when hungry
instead of by some code
the reverberating moon
rewinds its purebeams
and sends them down
again and forever, in the fey
Fissures
splinter open
in a daily routine
like veins in a leaf, like canyons
like growth
on nights
when i let a
spider live, on nights when
i take it outside in a glass:
shivers
and days
when i stamp a spider under
shoe, on those days when i
stop life dead flat:
relief
How long have I chewed herbs,
Trying to forget you?
What was once a music inside me
Is now only my heartbeat
Your face ripples –
A reflection on the Lethe
The arpeggio of your laughter
Looped like a wormhole in my memory
How many suns did I reject
After dreaming of you?
What was once a heartbeat inside me
Is now only a muscle contracting
Your face is an amalgam
Of other portraits now
The decrescendo of your sigh
Cut in half like an earthworm in my memory
How many moons will I pocket
Trying to white you out?
you were pulling
a wasp’s sting out of my back
after our fight
you were playing doctor
and i was patient
the wasp was scared
and i could feel you pulling
the hot sting out of the wasp, too
kissing the reddened skin
and saying gently, “don’t jerk”
and i could feel the release
of a thousand and one
wasp stings pulled from the frightened world
by your sad fingers
and tired eyes
In order to have a complete nature
Full of all experiences
God needed to sin
To count it among His powers
So he made you and me
To commit our adulteries
Mature creations doing what God wished
Yet not what He ordered
Because All comes from God
God birthed Himself to forgive Himself
Which is all theological longhand
For this:
I have already forgiven myself
After the fashion of The
Being Who Needed to Know
Just like you, another piece of God, have done
lucent
nicotine dreams,
(the wasp, too, pollinates)
and under honeycombed bridges
i swim,
reflect
upon a moonbeam during day,
and wake only to your
kiss: soft as an
egg yolk
tonight,
you were in an
ache i felt. pinned upon
the ceiling, the top of your head
smelled nice
the train moans like a ghost
and if it’s hauling coal
or cars of people
it’s pushing carbon
there and back
a ghost groans like a train
but do not ask of sonics
or metaphysica, for i am
a humble journalist only telling
what i heard
is it so, so mad
to wire a robot thus?
that it would metronome
a truer beat than people
in the way angels worship more cleanly
the consciousness of the giraffe
is what “looks” at me through black lashes
and not the entire giraffe at once
when i say unto you
the giraffe popped its neck looking moonward
there are more things in head and heaven
than there are in reality
that list in god’s brain always-and-eternally
incomplete of all things-at-once
(it is not so unusual upon waking)
I’ll divine meaning from your insides
And watch which way the birds fly
I’ll put your face under my pillow
And learn about you while I sleep
I’ll wait for lightning to strike a willow
And ask the ashes which tomb to sweep
And when I get my answers
I’ll let you know immediately
⨀ 