Next sunset
Remember after this song to seed the next shadowland of loss, following the fever of fences we built to keep us in, and terrors out, when in the shade of their heights they only heightened fears, when in the privacy of night, we meant to leap between those stars, counting.
Intentional geographies
I know you dreamt of wings
but all I can make is maps
of words
and I hope
one day to sketch a way
back to a moment when
you knew carrying hands.
For an opening
To want the eye
that sees where
I cannot enter
to blink from
this blind
impossibility.
Beyond ends
So much remains after fear and desire.
I am astonished by the last things to run
from the hearts of the living, into death
and by the running river of their return.
Over water
See the moon mirror.
Hear her cadence, spin.
That mother’s heart
choked with the sight
of us.
And stay
Unless you pushed us
from that amniotic round
of insular growth,
we could not live––
to unknow
its whispered secret,
to seek it out among
the throbbing body
of the rest of us.
And not a drop
And yet whole worlds
so close, postponed
by colliding logics,
opinions where sight
might be, to common
need. We could not
invent the water,
though some
tried.
Against the rest of it
Hang on, I tell the children. There is a place beyond this, and you get there by going in––deeper, not away. I want them to know this. I want to know this. I want to stop everything and hold each other and share whatever anybody has of food and music while the animals slide between our legs, onto our laps, our shoulders, mewing, barking, cooing in chaotic chorus until sleep.
Meanwhile, I collect the history of this––place? Time? Us? ––I don’t know which, twig by fallen twig, torn fabric scraps, dropped feathers from their wings, these pieces everywhere.
Then I catch myself doing it again, in response to the next news of the macabre. I think, no, that won’t go through, and they won’t do it, although I know better. That refusals like these work as lubricant against the gears, that refusals like these say proceed to the machine, with a sigh where a scream should be.
But I cannot spend all day screaming while there are still-living children here with me. I want them to go on living. I say, today we are making nests. Today, let’s gather what we can find. All the broken bits will do.
And when they say for what? I say, because Look, a nest is beautiful! And for the babies!
They go. We go off looking together. I wave them on ahead with a smile, and when they are out of sight, it’s time to weep.
In remembrance
they banish the cameras to do this the news goes dark the news cuts to the shining hall of shining faces beneath the rockets red glare what unholy betrothal of lust and war begat this moment when the lens of the hour
is a gunner’s sight aimed at the child in the rubble of a former home who dares to call after a missing friend, come out come out wherever you are the bombs bursting in air what truth is this what night their eyes the children
have cousins who from the opulent lawns on the other side before the chancellors of progress scream because they still have breath to give and they fly it to the upper reaches of the towers to interrupt a runaway feast
breaking news their cry the news goes dark quick mute the drums mute the mouths easy their crime to dare protection of these least their trespass their refusal to wait until the tanks circle back the temple veil splits o god they call why––
and the names of the next murdered child to see in those faces themselves to hold to those towers a mirror long enough to heat some other flame above those unhearing talking heads they call those names
the living script for a new chorus, defiant wings against the winding updraft of this heat, eyes on the ground, on the babies the lift of them the song the theft they are skinny they call wide-eyed in the night until they stop
the tanks roll
the bombs continue
the children are in pieces now
the children are beaten
for disrupting the peace
more come
singing
To the winning strategy
A cry like that final cry is music for everafters to dwell inside, but who hears? Above the commerce of killing in the name of ending death, only the closest to its edge. Those condemned to death see clearly, trust in water, for a body owning nothing can never be owned, and give it all away with an abundance that terrifies whomever thought themselves a step above now tawdry with pretense in a cardboard crown, another clowned owner of that endlessly elusive all.
***
Inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s I Have the Wisdom of One Condemned To Death
