The Charm Of Making

Songs and stories of infraction. I need to tender my heart, huge and weevil-addled, unfurling in wind. A demon ache. A love. If there is a love in me, may it swirl forth. I am unproduced. This is the stuff of silliness and myth. Whatever me there is begins with a goof and continues with death. The outline of my body in time. The digital wisp of night in the internet.

Calamities

It strikes me that I was replacing how much I missed you with how much I wanted her. But she was the stand-in for how much I wanted to rescue myself, like the old sea turtle. I watched her lay eggs in the sand, 85 years old and still trying to save her species, still willing to swim the high seas, through oil slicks and past the ghosts of battleships.

Restive Nocturne Two

I had your favorite music playing while I twisted her. It was the best. She was in love with me and I was in love with the you in her. And none of us was actually there. 

It was the perfect seance. Cherubs crushed their faces against her windows, trying to get out. It's been years and I can only write about it now. Because I am in time, but not of it. 

And time recalls me, works me back to those cracking moments with little bruises and short breaths. Eyes were on me and I didn't know how to do spring in autumn. It was okay to be alive, but not okay to want. In this nocturne, I'm counting the faces of my former selves like beads on a rosary. 

Your arms were long and I was in the rain. We turned wishes into earthquakes, chuckling away while the world fell.

Let X

--after Laurie Anderson

Then we went where two rivers met. We saw how we held hands the first time and laughed. We saw ourselves in pictures and stepped off the canyon edge into a willing sky. We flew for a while and knew every blue flower. This was all the roughness before civilization. We had to make complete cuts, meaning nothing and nothing again. Up against every word. I'm up against all of them and they form a thirsting army. You had a knife on the rim of your halo. Your scent was gasoline. There is nothing like a corpse. It does not wait and it does not want. It changes every minute and it does not regret. There is nothing like where bees come from. Not springtime, and not God. That was always a thick and foolish foolishness. Then we put our hands in soil and our hands were covered in soil.

Now You Do

Quick breathing in the open break, worlds away from toasty destiny, I'm with you and our past, shivering in alleys and cold hallways. In cold walls and eastern walks we gathered our stolen hearts and shared them up again in brightish light. Then fire bit our hands and we shoved off, our cabin wheeling. Cave spun, hair tangled in smarting roots, we dozed for a while and struck racking seas. The wreck of storms was for us and for distance and in my life I saw you polishing drab stars. My shoulderblades unbuckled and trees bent sidewise in a warming wind. I was all for finding perfect moments in our veering mind.   

Occupations And Some Satellites

A cheery band of brigands cradled the thicket of silver in their eyes, retired forethought, afterthought, and simply went where the growing was warm. They took toads with them. Old toads that stammered and halted until their feet could hardly kick. Stunted feet in crisp envelopes. Under a bush a painter sat, wondered aloud in the silence and made do with hooey. The gun stunned the fly and the liar. A hokey shadow named itself King Me, and played at the lacquered instrument until my hands could almost move without. Water poured on things that grew, then went back down. A tired functionary filed the form to end addictive delirium. A banker unfroze the accounts and went warbling through the town for the sake of songbreaking. He skipped in the rain. He rejoined the fish and added the day to the list. And the names, too.

Old Man And Ants

Filing into the hovel, towards tenderness, the ants gathered at the feet of the squat old man. He had long since gone beyond disgust. He would never harm them. They were old and he was old. They were dying and he would sweep them into the jungle when they expired. He would sprinkle them onto good soil so their dead bodies could nourish it. They were confident in their feeling that he would care for them. How strange for the ants to think this way. Of course, they did not exaclty think. Their thoughts were, in fine, formations of the old man.