Hurry. But not as you once did.
Go as the sun arriving, rising
as sea foam up shoreline,
each into its pause.
to the quick
from the cut
from the cut
Hurry. But not as you once did.
Go as the sun arriving, rising
as sea foam up shoreline,
each into its pause.
not to be captured
How does the question of how a world ends find any answer except in its continuance? And how does anyone describe its substance except to note how something once familiar may at once become an entirely different thing. Backyard toolshed now an abattoir, hillside flower now fanged beast. The ground beneath the next step melts and we keep on posting notes to show we are either fine or having the sort of periodic collapse that indicates a belief in non-collapse as the default. It’s the rest that’s concerning, but anybody capable of noting this knows better than to mention it. O love, why do you leave us like this? I asked her and she said Yes.
What we meant.
To loop a single song
until the pattern breaks
to echo ever after.
territories
where were we after
leaving forever sea
deserted now
light flash to blind
stirring some end
we held breath
over steam keening
at the hollows of
throats at the caverns
between gut and lung
where voice roots
defiant of confines
somewhere between
dawn and not yet
dark we pooled longings
in throats to spend them
when night came
our cry
After storm.
Spinning above our framed parts, it was unclear who reached first when we fell and the silence to follow was the underground river after deluge sounding the strain of watercourse leaning into its break from behind the membranes of our eyes. The water ran fast but we held it in us as long learned, with late afternoon shadow draped across floored figures and our faces saw each other still dry, waiting for the coming quake.
Bodies in late afternoon.
When the sky bleeds sunset into the back against glass door under rustle of palms near boxes to chill the neck trained against attack and fatigue of keeping this impulse near keeps heads heavy in morning on bodies so long theaters of war under constant command to move and move out, a sudden stillness may sing.
Our storage.
It was time, after all. Of this to admit to waiting space with delicate apprehension of open book not yet read or gone. Something breathing in the boxes we kept and time to look so we opened to see what we were holding, and it was parts of us everywhere in pieces.
lightly
where are we
thin paper in breeze
under arches of feet
when to hold
us is to hold
not speak
A long return.
You have to keep imagining layers of stars at night, fold after fold the inverted brain, its witness a single synapse. But then what. Do you do? With these hands but set them over knees to breathe as wave rolls over back.
The air, its sudden stillness, its small voice, and the long watch just above its range and the watcher shrouded in a role too big for such a tight fit. In these clothes, this body, this moment, the incessant shout of it, ongoing. What is the sound of a call from nowhere and who is this approaching, calling back?
So little returns in time. Cause to wonder which of us is out. But certain patterns predict their own change. Watch the angle. Velocity hinges on this. Admit it now, how often you are carried across sky seeing bodies in it like a child still unable to crawl or follow without the appearance of other hands.
where tired of crossing
ready to say
keep the fire
wanting only to keep this skin
unburned for a little while
the last one yet to scar
to blend in with the rest
ready to welcome a long
rain with the imminence of
threat no longer in the foreground
even if of course always there
but yes, let us plan a return
to refraining here is peace
with no one asking whose