I wrote the earth before it fell
The rock pool is bay leaf green fig split open
in which a lavender fist is clenched
crouched, sinister, tense;
bent by a directionless wind
i would never start something like this
as the feather broke through her skin,
uncomplaining, feverish, calm, the sea
played lion with my sleepless limbs
and lock-jaw, its gruff breath intending
to distract me to its unopenable depths
and jagged windows come kill yourself in my maw.
With the sea then i went, with the sea's
intractable hand, and held on to missing walls
of not
listening to the inhuman sounds, as absent as myself,
bent by a directionless wind, with the sea's
hand cradling my hip, i went to the rock pool
to soak my feet in its fig jam sweet cold relief.
I was there, waiting by the breathing fence
sun-breathing, converting, transforming,
already gone, folded into the palm of a
hundredth thousandth liminal flower
not waiting for birth, but the bitterest taste
of all mountains to form inside my mouth
letting down their silver river hair, to fall
from the first molecular weight, the first
jostling of hips, Adam and Eve had ever heard,
arms twisted into principles, an ouroboros,
oxidizing the all-encompassing vibrationless void
into which, wildly, and with startling confidence,
the bluest feather fell
& together with a blood trickle from a flock of snaking peacocks
magick in the sky! & the paling mountains fanned into circling peacock tails,
skrying, i was there, waiting, changing, by the fence
leaning, wheezing, cold feet overlapping,
noticing the shallows where colors are events
only visionaries can predict, such lost, miraculous hues. |
Waif-high phlox, scarlet-lipped
and other potted flowers encroach
their disembodied happy steps, a
hedgerow of tongues
graze the sinus numbness
until i know
i shall not smell it when it comes
to clamp my neck
words betray the forest
photosynthesizing
i hook a struggling bee or moth
that laid its fingers
beneath our costumes
like hidden leaves and hollow jackets
from the limp water
i have met each thousandth granule
yet none has truly scored my hand, met my friends
as they have not met me, i test shallows, but depths resist
i fool myself into believing light exists
outside the dark leaves of moist breath
that is not me
where you begin and i beg
in to see your lapping bourbon coves
as eyes in which to sink my gaze
piercing a turquoise hell
i wrote the earth before it fell
hemless, helmless, telescopic wrists
untwist from hands washed by the rain
& that was where i began,
as the day was finishing, and the sky
a bus shelter strewn with silver bottle-tops,
forgave my faceless whispers
into the mailbox's metal tube: this is not
my voice, i have moved from this address.
Senses confuse - i hear thick sea or flower
scents climb towards my heart
taste the train driver's gaze dragging past
see down the street but do not see |
