Before recorded time
You don’t have a name for what you are in until you’re leaving it. Sometimes, to move, you have to try to give it words even when the blasts keep interrupting, even when the words you have fail to satisfy the genre of official record.
arriving to address the assembly
i can’t believe this, you say again,
& keep on. as though to sing
that song of yours in strange words
we do not know. despite myself
you say––
[or in spite of?]
[to spite. the blast]
against scattering & by way of explanation
of why you ––anything. we are skeptics
of this logic & think you are creatures
who do not know what you are
perhaps because you insist on asking
what is this & why
[scatter. return]
we think maybe this is your only song
we think you want help with the singing.
we have seen you watching so we came
for we are the ones who come & go.
A refrain
I am thinking about the way things go today, still meaning to learn what people mean when they say that’s how it goes–––
as it goes–––
about what is leaving and how it happens a little at a time and then all at once, la rêve du monde slipping into a well of missing words and I would prefer to be less aware of being little more than bereft wading through the river of it rushing out, looping a single refrain, please.
Beyond calculation
Why
pay tribute before the tribe anoints
pay attention before the stage announced
pay each always before the deserving?
Because
I offered nothing
to deserve
the breath of this life
still here, this reckless
offering.
Spectacles of progress
Notice its efficiency,
the ease with which
this machine can
separate the living
from the life.
In waters with wind
The transfiguring mirror
of dancing gaze disrupts
a quiet lie.
In this condition
Being a human creature makes me prone to bouts of fantasy. Such as, sometimes I get it in my head that I would like to go out and run with some deer, with feelings of vague and wistful longing. Then occurs to me that following an impulse like this to its natural conclusion will likely result in an awkward encounter, as I do not currently have any actual friends who are deer. If I did, I would probably know that going for a run through some woods or across a field or even a highway–– however spontaneous it may seem in a moment–– is the sort of thing one must be invited to do. Then I recall what kind of creature I really am, and feel vaguely ashamed, which seems like another habit particular to my kind.
As above
Where murmuration
of birds under dark sky
is often invisible
without obsidian mirror,
a tiny cloud glimmers,
poised to rain a single
poem.
