11. fingers of the bird

new monster

time they say
is like
sand

each moment
an implied
equidistance
from the rest,
each with

its own
heart
burrowed inside

the thousand things
felt in
each
are all
available
at all
points

also those
imagined

space is lodged
inside
that heart
also

like a
pinecone
ready to
spill its
seed
at frost,
waiting to
decompress

the image is of
a dawn a lighter shade
of gray
and the earth too
a lighter gray
and
me giving thanks
for everything
for everything
i remember

the stutter collected
inside my tongue

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

dearest

there is no such thing
as a beast with no burden.

this feeling that remains
like sand in the mouth of the oyster
of having cheated everything
to get near to you,
beloved, best-loved,
the one i loved,

defying everything
but words and actions--
with you in every way
but those of fact and fiction.

i dwelled within you secretly
and only because you had
so much to give me,
beloved, best-loved,
the richness of your hair,
the smell of you, the heavy softness.

you were like a phoenix
bursting on the horizon
limitlessly far away
and yet i came close enough
to brush the skin of your hands
with my fingers and call it
an accident

and your ankles
the music you listened to
just scraps
the smell of the knowledge
of things that surrounded you

it was more
than wanting
beloved

i had
an oblique harvest
of you--a harvest
of the things near you

(gathered the dust
of your star

on hands and knees
gathering dust

you formed
inside me
a precious jewel)

i saw the blue of your veins
like rivers
i felt the skin of your voice
on the air.

roses

give   thanks
for the  sickness   of it
(the words   like
uneven piston)

the  scrap
of  mirror-glass
in   my  pocket

its fresh
points

i can  clutch  at
and feel  razed  there
feel   kept

in the moment
feel
if nothing else

miraculous

inability
to  free   myself

in  compulsive
blank

compulsive
blankness

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)

ich grolle nicht

i have almost nothing.
not time, not anything, practically.
i have nothing but love.

love, and pain.

love, and hope.


and also the inside voices.


not even a poem.
just a collection of sentences.


and the inside
the inside voices.

(and love.)

watch the collection
drift through my fingers.

hey down a down
the inside voices

veronica

one changes so much when there is so much to change. 
these objects around me, the visually there, the touched--
things are nothing more than actions

slow enough in time
to be identified
as singular

the singularities
are so small
so small

bound a thousand years out from here and now,
up into brilliant white fire-marked space
and that dust becomes a face
and that dust becomes a face

cosmic and forceless
infinitely fine
your name a breath
your name a breath
in you all things reside

zinc metaphor

rhododendrons are bright pink flowers
they are the cups of the morning.

rhododendrons are salmon pink and white
against a deep green leaf.

an unpleasantly fuzzy stem complements
the rhododendron, the cup of the morning.

even the dead leaves don't lose color.
they turn a caramel brown.


the zinc metaphor
spreads
over everything

i wept in a dream

the delineation of an arc,
circus tent-like, of desire
for form, for shape,
for less things--for all-widening--

a singularity in the pole of the world.

i have done such things
i know not yet what they are.

actions trail behind womblike causes,
leaving white waxen tails like comets
when i closed my eyelids i saw them
burning there still,

spinning in depths
deeper than space.

control--infection--
the mechanics of a dream
i have done such things
i have done such things.

milton

the stomate of the rose
nodding against the stem
like a hand
against a wrist
twitching there

when i woke from a dream
i saw so little

the birds wandered the skies
the flowers barely budded out

quietus

croesus of the golden horn
and page blossom from the silver book
the sound of sand scraped against itself
the crunch of a thin layer of sand imploding
and page blossom from the silver book

i have done such things
i have done such things
sweetheart do i know you anymore?
what have i done?  do you know?

descent into ownership
the black and red grip of mastery
the press of lips and the grind of hips
i broke shallow against a lintel
i swept the pieces with my mind

with the mind that spilled from my head
with that page of blossom from the silver book

meditations of the beast

song

air air hold her hair
hold it there for me to stare
let me look at it in love
look at it from far above
look at it from near below
look at it from high and low

every love becomes my own
from the east to western zone
broken in the morning time
broken at the evening's line
hand in hand with golden youth
foraging the edge of truth

i will seek you everywhere
air air that held her hair