one note

in a gathering marginal crowd

Rhythms of earth tongues,
come out. I give these
primitive liberties forms
to evade surveillance
of that principle
bent on separation
of bodies from themselves
and one another
that enacts bars
of murderous purity
masquerading
as sensible grammars.
Nocturnal creatures know
me, sit in my lap, lap from
my hands & laugh at extents
of your fears. We only eat prey,
love
, announce the joyful birds.
Separate us all you like. Each
solitude only offers another
rebirth. With each, we widen
the net of our bodies. We become
looming canopies connecting
at altitudes & depths, above
& beneath the walls you drive
yourself mad with the effort
of erecting in your endless quest
to extract Resource from source
while mass-printing gods to coddle
your greed, and their dragons laugh
Will you look at this face? No
you can’t bear it, finding
in its gaze the endless points
of no return, each now a star
in the night you claimed
to conquer & our skins fallen
from us, we move from
their weight & your ability to trace
yes what are you tracing & do you
know when the last wall is built its last
stone in place and the weight of its
prowess inverts and you find yourself
entombed in some solitary well, to call
us, who will hear you but the lowest,
who come and go
among these depths
and their
dead?

secret lives with birds

on openings

now you see me now i fly
what you cannot think
i dream of a constant
beginning
will be your life
in broken records
in babies’ mouths
in water i can’t
even
we say
again taking
turns online
& laughing with
the relief of it if you
are what i cannot
think then be here
o god
for the life of me
i just–––

*

Inspired by the final line in Cal Bedient’s poem “Clouds of Willing Seen in the Bird Day”:What you cannot think will be your life.

at first light

this dark glass

turning a page from the volume at my side & long unopened i saw the book of love come after the book of annihilation where to everything there is a season and all seasons point to their eventual end & so now here i am, casting bread over waters to find it later where rose of sharon & lily among thorns & i remember looking how i could not find my love so now i call open, dove when i come to your door this is the strange soul begging for its only work

ars moriendi

if it goes like this what now

the week for learning
how it was death
been knocking
on my nerves
was the week for learning
how
now might be
an entry into this
high time
to set some things
down and go
into that long channel
with high archways
of blue-white ice
where a single bird silhouette
flaps waiting, high above
& also you
in that passage
where we can’t take what
with us when we
go

Space lets go

they love their lines, don’t they, love?

they love their lines,
don’t they, love?

like, here body,
there mind &
soul on another
level still but
here’s what i
know, even the
space of no matter
has substance &
pretending some
other way is a runaway
cart horseless after
its fool self while
i the once upon a
river here been
wet and heavy
until a green
scar in scorched
earth & once
no longer moving
find cause
to remember
to weep for
what
mass was
once in me
for carrying
only
to find its
waters
gone come
back to me
Time i am
calling you
now
cross them

at the end

of a long and winding perch

they tire me, these boys
who mean to make me
an old woman so young
meaning I guess to put
an end to possibility
for fear of their constant
little deaths but we manage

to love somehow in a place
of constant beginnings
far from their halls of
perpetual mirrors

& invite them in, and
they mean well but
get sick before arrival
afraid i guess to enter
anywhere where they
are not the all and
its eventual end.

art and artists

opening notes of a survey

you can see us in Goya where
cannibal Time eats his children
hooded sisters pointing

to the door, bodies swallowed
by earth as if by probing black
in earnest, he would find

courage to move the brush
Rothko called them performers
Lorca waited on a ghost

to let it harness him by words

& when nowhere stood still we
gathered in twos and threes
hoping to hear the heart

of one living beat hard time
into heat where a mind’s
nerve breaks

a call or cry we wanted
to respond & drummed
an ache the tenderness

of those faces spectacular
& then it was late
all eyelids and moons

o death how

you insinuate

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