raucous freshness

that hot concrete,

minute in detail, by turns sharp and smooth--

i crawled after your shadow.

i was glad to grovel

in the day's sun, which was gray, almost,

in your presence.

i had been tight within myself

always, tight as a seed.

but a hand reached out

of that fiery, turgid depth.

it was a shaken and pale shoot

and it was mine.

i looked at it. it plunged into

the presence of you as if

into water.

look at the cracks in that road.

palpable almost to the eye

in your light, that blue shadow

edged so deep.

like my joy.

watch this hand shake,

with those deep eyes, watch

how you

unfurl me.

raucous freshness

digging toward center,

the seed i

swallowed: your image.

every goddamn root

splits through my red and black--

veins, arteries, corpuscles,

the machine of the earth allegorized in flesh,

the raw root-network of pulses

that unfurls, monstrous, of its own accord,

my body, become your ground.

eyes beating blind, vision ribboned with the

impulse

of your juice:

this

very heart

is yours.

raucous freshness

this is a story i have told myself already:

but a hand reached out

of that fiery, turgid depth.

it was a shaken and pale shoot

and it was mine.

i looked at it. it plunged into

the presence of you as if

into water.

as if

into

water,

distilled

and shattered

against

a pit

of glass:

smooth

and clear

as inverted

sunlight.

my love demands

what it can:

this

very heart

is yours.

save

me

from

my own

flesh.

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.

raucous freshness

laura turned into a game for petrarch,
a chase through stone monuments
with green moss new-rhizomed on them
every year

every year he came back to her
and said something new on her face...

i feel wild tonight wild and cyclical
thinking of you
vanesa

of how i would think your name and

feel chasms open like windows in me

and light come up from them
from the molten core of me itself
the earth inside not red but like a sun.

and so my purpose
quite plain
vanesa
i do not re-rewrite your name
but live the legacy
you made in me
and write
what does not pass for poetry

raucous freshness

i have handled worse than these,
you say to yourself, and say it freely--

the beauty of a saw
scraping the wood away
from itself,

as if your words
are a heel
scraped
on concrete--

the words would be
truer yet if you
had the breath
left
to say them.

raucous freshness

the gold was time
or longing

the gold was the root
of my tongue

all tastes at its base.

i was untethered
but i didn't notice.

sky had stretched, scratching at itself like trees' leaves,
over the lintel of the door like
a smear of blue paint.

i had been still in a corner
amidst dead leaves,
covered in them,
like a bad dog

with my back to the door

as its hinges
moved.

raucous freshness

time draws the line.  addiction through time--i never knew, but time draws it, the line.

i thought i was addicted to drink.  i was not addicted to drink.  i find that now, when i go for weeks without a drop of drink.  nothing in me wants it with white-hot wanting.

and i thought i was addicted to smoking.  i am not addicted to smoking.  it is sometimes a wistful longing, a pang, the desire for smoking, but nothing like heart-deep, nothing like.

i was addicted to the cut. 
and i am still addicted to the cut. 
everything in me
unfurled down
that line 
made in my skin, everything
pooled
in the shade of that upwelling. 

even now i turn to stone
thinking of it, thinking
of loosing
feeling
in its
diasporate freshness,
its rapt white strength
of endurance in creation

and its blind red
result.

raucous freshness

for e.e. cummings

she was so fresh so ridiculously fresh i could smell her when she just walked into the room
so i took her for a spin
it was like spring rolled right off her after a bitter january and i could see what i wanted was it so wrong
to take her out on the road

she was so new
she was so fresh
so new and fresh and tender

and ready to ride in
they don't always know when they are ready
but i could tell.

raucous freshness: nocturne

i feel
the heat  tangling   stretching   strangling
in your presence   as if from   out
the mouth
the   rose

burst

red
dark  

smooth 


nothing  left for
tonight   but  bask
in   remembrance

girl-lady

lover  i want


broken as a line of teeth
broken from the jaw and throat
but its impetus whole
as the seed
as the clinging vine
as the sweet root
ripped half by half
from the vocal fold
but the push of the sound
as made
as a whole
world

raucous freshness

grace--
i live in grace.
it feels like tears
tears on a face.

tears of joy
or tears of pain
the feeling goes round
and round again.

and as it rounds
itself anew
the moment like
a centrifuge

spinning away
the imperfect

just
water
salt
against
the flesh

i give thanks
for this
deep
pause--

so much
larger
than its
cause

raucous freshness

and too, hands, eyes, words and names of things from out the concrete heart, each like lace, with holes in a pattern

(i stood on your porch and i smoked a cigarette.  the sky was night.  and it smelled like the lawn.  a man in a jacket.  there you were.  and you remarked on a choice.  above night circled.  the eyes of my face circled in, falconlike.  you you you

later a woman gave me a deck of tarot cards.

i was dizzy with you.  and it was cigarettes near the lawn.  a choice you made.  later my heart beat with it.  you you you you you)

my veronica, you stood apart, hanged in constellation like the lover of a god.