resonance

the waves frequent westcliff drive,

the beaches there--a slow furl, seemingly,

of heavy, heavy water.

that curve mirrored

in the taut lines of roller coasters

at the boardwalk. the curve moves longingly,

as if it were the peel of the air, drawing itself back.

i was shuddering at the top of that spinal

curve, and then plunging down

through air as if it were water.

and after i

got off,

i thought that

these paradoxical

movements

skinned from time

all were once

or would be

yours.

resonance

stretch of hand:

the winter-sallow skin,

dry-run, its minimal geometry

broken in light--

the spreading muscles

spinning thin.

over and over--

its involuntary dance

under-familiar.

i plumb myself but find

only freshness.

endless freshness, raw as unspun silk.

the rhythms i knew

gone

the breath that flies my taut chest

broken

like a line of teeth.

what happened to

the things i knew?

scrabble

like mouth on rock,

like seed on the bone-dry plain

to press my face

to the memory of you, but

as everything, shadeless in this newness,

you peel away.

resonance

dear reader,

i am writing words

for the express purpose

of turning off

my mind.

my hands have

shaken other hands

and shaken by themselves:

the above exemplifies

description.

my hands have turned

like leaves falling from trees

into words in my own hands

and this is how

i have

and will

destroy

my own self

and not wait

for winter

white and cloudless

as raw pelting grains

of white rice

to do it for me.

the above

exemplifies

metaphor.

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.

resonance

there is no answer in vengeance because vengeance is only the apparition of repetition.

this is why in the morning i would go and prune my climbing roses.
i would fork spade after spade of nutrient-rich ground
back over the roots, a morning ritual.

and then i would wind the cut stems around my wrists
and pretend i was capable of filling death
with something other than life,

like duty, or shame,
or the nutrient-rich corrosion
of an unacknowledged self...

but the roses were props
and the pretense was hollow.

now i philosophize
inside
and the rose grows
a tangle
over the wall of the house.

resonance

i will never be spent
in composing your elegy,
your elegy of red.

if i were to embroider your face
i would embroider in red silks,
on cloth dyed red.

i would dye the cloth myself
with a long hair brush of my hair,
with handprints of red,

with red i had made myself,
and when i had finished sewing you
i would undo

every
last
stitch

resonance

no point in swallowing
i let it roll
from the corners of my lips

overfull and
unfed...

the buck with
its golden horns

its nostril rimmed
with gold

as if it were
a statue,
so still.

the scent of pine
almost blue
in the nose

i was not choking.
i was not choking.
i was not falling
into the pool,
the water so clean
spotlessly clean
because everything
in it
turned to gold
and drifted
to the bottom.

i do not dare you now
because there is nothing to dare,
i am so still

i was not alone

because god lifted me
in his golden palm.

resonance

you await yet
one drop of sanity to salvage itself
from this thing--the smoking wreck
of your sense of safety
and you await it alone because you have learned
to be your own hero
from a disney movie
and you are not good with words
and you are afraid.

but there is no connective thread
in your hand.  because flesh
was supposed to be your guard
but it betrayed you.

the connection isn't in your reach--
you watch it writhe somewhere down deep
like a live wire, sending out
such sparks
and you just
hurt yourself.

resonance

i don't need a voice to sing, because singing is the thing that grows when nothing else can.  you and i know it; we all know it--you strip everything to make a song.  you strip the things that make you to dust and bone and heat, and in that desert your song grows and grows.  so that the wave of the sound is never a repetition, a dulled oscillation, but rather a force larger than the space and time it moves in.

resonance

masks

the image is
a cut of
orange-red
silk

swathed
close across
my face

as if it
had welled there

covered
all the sense-holes
with
tight-drawn
red-gold


deep in its surface
is etched
your name--
breathed out
it's love
breathed in
it's pain

resonance

parts that have been
writhing
under the ground
shoot green stems
flowers
comet-red with heat
burst open across the skin
petals rippling open
like an expanding flame

the texture of a scream
undulant like fire
across earth-pressed hills

i will take these blossoms
and make such a thing of them

a skin
like nuit's
an arc
deep as the sky
flowers like stars
burning
pricked
out
straight
from the heart

i will do such things
i know not yet what they are

earth and sky,
recover me
recover me

earth and sky,
recover me

(slack-jawed
with freshness
lips red
with force
the shattered
celestial fire
of the bloom)

resonance

kettle full of thorn diary chapter and verse:

the sweat on your hands like a sun disc
like a sun disc the rose in the fire
the rose in the fire like a deer in the wire
like a deer in the wire the femur the spire

the femur the spire like the house of the moon
who came to there came there too soon oh too soon
who came to there came there too soon oh too soon
mourn mother the moon mourn the shatter of beams
mourn those split unborn stars as if they were anything