flood paths, faultiness
to weep over this huddled form
may in the end be an antidote
to the current of grief, that
––force
[o time]
where to meet head on
and survive
[o mother]
demands surrender to its coming
[o you ]
left behind too for the onward march
[you, too]
and nearly disappeared
[and yet. and yet]
save now
us our mothers
this time
our sense of any
o god but
these blind barons’
blaring horns
in atmosphere
if cessation of air then
if balloon i can hold it maybe
if i can carry it over
if you catch (if you see me)
if in what happens after that i may remember (that point)
if what pierced was the inlet of air (and not skin)
if remember
if i ask you will you (try please)
if to prevent this you may (show me)
if i am breaking and fear (to remember how)
if whether an alternative (or what?) ever was
if can be helped
if this breaks everything open in the end
if asking you where does that leave me or us standing
if to this question one answer is back to the floating again
if dizzy just remembering that vertigo and
if terrified to go so far and high so fast
if needing help at altitude will there be any or only the snipers again
if alone losing air at that distance will there be others
if so and we burst at those heights will it matter
if skins gone
if breathing
if not something
if i knew i could explain at lower elevations
if i go i need to tell you i have tried before
if i go i need to tell you i am scared
if i go listen i could not speak before of this fright it had more dimensions but
if language would allow i would have shared with others i saw shaking too but
if this is time for turning to another, calling hold
if i or you should try
if what is here
if when is now
if_____then, how?
if i am running out of pen
Call and response
And since it was no good sitting like that, choking in the sweltering attempt at stillness, the youngest among us started crying and the rest joined in. It was wondrous! Lamentations get short shrift in a culture of bucking up and keeping calm but look where that’s got us. We wept until we exploded with laughter and then we wept some more until we were singing. No one had the notes or the words and no one could remember them later. But in that moment, we all knew––by heart, as the saying goes, without faltering. The wingbeat of that hour dawned an owl in the heart of us, to call who? Who? and howl, and the only way to keep on listening was to call back, and we did.
In defiance of capture.
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.
The nocturnal creatures know me. They sit in my lap, lap from my hands, and laugh at the extent 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 the looming canopies connecting at altitudes and depths, above and beneath the walls you drive yourself mad with the effort of erecting in your endless quest to extract Resource from Source. You make a god to coddle your greed, and the dragon laughs.
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 and your ability to trace.
When the last wall is built, the last stone in place and the weight of its prowess inverts and you find yourself entombed in a solitary well, calling, who will hear you but the lowest, who come and go among these depths, and the dead?
