4. prayer-within

new monster

details, bleached and splitting, warping
as if in the sun of my thoughts--as if my mind
were a thing of light and not just pressure.
there is a time, it told me,
its words as crystalline, as incised against
each other
as cut
glass,
to drink the juice
from the vein.

but i was awake, sitting up
as if from a dream, as if from a bed
i had slept in
as if a seed in earth
and the whole time
i had been watching the light twist into shadow
as if there were anything in this world
beyond
the wild reach
of pressure.

raucous freshness

there is no logic without a god
to hold it against--i turned you into a prayer
because you were sweet to the roof of my mouth
and when i breathed in i breathed in your shadow,
because you rolled like an orange between teeth,
so frail, so flavorful.

but a god's logic is not our logic.  the roll of you
against the dental crest, as if when i said your name
i touched you, or thought of you.

as if i could love you without mouthing more
than your name.  i lay in a borges dream
soaked in blood, fist-deep in flowers,
breathing weary as a tiger
against the bars of an
interdental cage.

and the seed twisted
hyacinthine
between the jail of my ribs
fed on nothing but the blood of your name
and the flower of my breath.

dearest

these pathetic ways i hurt myself, still,
the eternal apprehension of death
an excuse to keep myself up all night.
i spend the hours admiring the city's private spill of stars,
immediate enough to tongue, the reflected street lights
in the rainslick on the pavement,
light
a nocturnal emission.

to care for oneself is
terrible, unsettling
as the bone-husband
of Persephone.
biting down on the seed,
juice
exploding
as if juice were light
from the microcosm
of the street, just as inept
as this body
at keeping
dry,
and as
inept
at rest.

roses

in all honesty,
at this point,
i could ask myself what i am waiting
to acquire--
the beauty of an abstract
painting,
or a trifecta of die-cast
virtues--a suture
for some internal rip,

or something stranger: the discoloration of my eyes
as if they were a doll's eyes, my hand
the slender pale hand
of a waxen statue, the release
of an inner
inanimate
nature,
my nature...

as if, prayed for, i were a galatea, become
human
only to have time
stop about her
like a stiff garment.

i want to hold myself still as memory,
still as flesh can stay.

resonance

innumerable as a Seurat blue,
the points to life range
the span of time
like petals sinking into a pool.

your face is a mandala, therefore,
each moment of you
a grain i spilled on the floor.

time raised you up like a welt
and i slipped into its repentance.
time raised you up like a leaf
airborne without precedent.

your face is a mandala, therefore,
each moment of you
a grain i spilled on the floor.

ich grolle nicht (sonnet-form)

awake again all night
and alone, time thick with shadows,
the t.v. going and the radio, maybe
i am finally distracted enough

to be able to say that, god,
i have known joy in pain but not like this,
every moment jewel-thick with its own worth
and each moment in hell.

(the t.v. going and the radio, maybe,
awake again all night,
and alone, time thick
every moment jewel-thick

and each moment in hell.
and each moment in hell.)

veronica

still, taut
as a cat
waits.

they all thought
i would sleep
in a lily-white bed,
blankets clean
and crisp
as the stars overhead,

without memories
of stifling,
until i was done
breathing in
and out
scorn--

a sensitive nature,
i waited
until they were spent,
and now i take
my own.

you left me alone
like an easter egg
and 
i had 
bad dreams.

zinc metaphor

the dream is of
a landscape littered
solely
with its own length
and its own breadth:

a space, crumpled
between substance and
concept like

a sheet gripped
in clutching hands.

turned this way and that
i am a snow globe of positions.


the things i do not allow myself
are only the things i need

if i cannot cajole this one
pathetic miracle--
the rough pleating
of substance
and concept--
into the length and breadth
of my hands.

i wept in a dream

i wept in a dream, beloved.

i wept that you were there
and i wept that you were not there.

if you were there, i wept,
then,
that i was not there, or that
i was, o my lover, with

your eyes and mouth like
stars.

milton

the thing is that
when incising
the flesh turns
on the point
of the knife and

not the other way around.

it was something
to center on.

now i have nothing
but happiness,

and that, terrifyingly,
is not
a dream.

quietus

as if i were made
of particle-board,
screw happiness
into me,
o god.

i have
resisted
with my eyes
and hands
the touch
of it,

your most
refulgent
gift.

but it crept in
through my ears and mouth
and vibrates on
a crystal pitch--

your logic is not
my logic, god. 
i am held
in the palm
of your hand,
blind,
and you make
me sing,

sing most
anything.

meditations of the beast

burrowing toward center

in the darkness,
the smell of jade-green forest

and sunset, the smell
even of a sun-warmed feather

a bird dropped
in exploding
cacophonous
from a treetop

the swirl of wings
the sky's metonym
and the choked stomach
of the earth

and the water flowed
like diamonds.

this was the blood in the vein.
i looked up

and i said your word.