Things were connected. That much we could tell. We squinted at the things. Later, we thought about the space between them: that connective tissue we called nothing then, all now.
Detail Work
Nonlocal connections
Month: April 2024
Probabilities
Of interconnected worlds
At the last quake, these particles waved away all pretext of certainty and became again shrouded in mystery. In the final seconds before the ground shook beneath us, we had been admiring the precise clarity of our charts––and by extension, ourselves. An hour later, we looked back at those versions of ourselves as quaint and long ago, when these constant waves were given specks, neat and known.
The Whole
Masked
That starry filament
the membrane of something
& no telling what.
Butterfly Wings Over Time
Now weather
how long have these tongues been training, gathering miles in this march?
all sinew and song now, seeding a note long overdue, stitched in the scars
of familial bones, now wind at broken backs where you fire at newborn ghosts
haunted by the children of the children you meant to unwrite but their names
were in the same hand as the first word and rhyme in this abundant night
now shining and porous with our open mouths the gates of a dream released
from these feet to our leaning crowns in the sight of what above your drones
past snipers’ tired talk of empty rights by which you vented brutal might this now when our huddled mass finds home in no-man’s-land of common exile
what horse for what discordant era now rides your conquest in reverse
what young hearts, annexed to your butchered beliefs beat back the boots
in which you shake behind armor to magnify your haunt without relief
lost pilgrim, it is time to take off your boots, unmask your eyes and stop,
unstop your ears for there is enough salt in our tears, enough light, to return
you to the land you lost yourself from when you rode off to claim the lot
no pilgrim, there will be no rest for these ghosts that haunt you for the land
so long watered by the slaughter of your making now becomes a rising spring
of remembrance in these open hands inviting your first word back to singing
by first light
To the Once and Future Child
Against annihilation
Love, stop carrying your grave on your shoulders.
Please, love––and start the story over
from the constant beginning where you knew,
love, the only end worth its means––
when you could still translate its sound
in the art of your fluttering hands.
Unmarked Passage
Between us
The door of some closure swings open and smoke moves through. Here is a time we may recall later if the possibility of recollection remains, marked by this unclear continuity singed and singing, the age of becoming.
Proximities
And perceptions of danger.
To dream with such madness that they still imagine dreaming beyond those walls, those armored guards who mock their trespass, but nearness to death brings a wisdom that looks like derangement to those cloaked in comfort, and these nearer know best how to see true danger, long known to swaddle its murderous intent in the softest of fabrics, the lush hides of eaten lambs. Still at their songs, to carry the road on their shoulders until it leads back to the beginning of that dream. Nearer, they sing, these mad marchers in sacred song. Nearer.
Relatively Speaking
Overheard
Throughout any intensive study of parts and the paradox of their respective movements, there is a strong possibility––depending on the openness of the researcher in question to perceive such an unexpected discovery––that one may find one’s own gaze to be a significant factor in the results, as though the parts themselves were engaged in an ongoing parallel study.
Strangers at Shorelines
Notes at the edge of a sea change
Who are these others, then? Kinship of water lapping at bare feet, the sudden excess gone again, then holding. Gulls in the spray, beneath rain. There are not many of us today, but we gather to feed an infant future, swaddled in cloud and often asleep. That it may grow fat with dream and laugh back at the shapes of our faces before learning to crawl and be caught in these waiting, open arms.
The Fastening
Of elements.
Beneath waving drapes of midnight, these lines
draw us out in the swell where the first caught hook
leaves the longest scar. No, love. You cannot go
back but to the opening or you lose it all to danger
us in this work of finding what the cynic masks
until mourning song against memory’s loss, by
turning heads to the young at the breast to owl
until we catch ourselves on trees. No we are not
birds we must ask for song first also love and
what comes suggests we are light, lighting
the eye back to her first sound and the shine
that preceded too the open mouth that
meant the beginning of you.