my corner of the spiderweb
swift is the decay
that calls back to bone,
the evergreen memory
and sunset reminiscence.
death is an essay
left in every room
like a gideon’s bible.
another sliver of self
sours in the summer heat.
another possibility
closes its eyes and leaps
from the cliffside.
halfway down
and clawing
for a parachute. jaws
kiss the rocks.
the moth-eaten sinews
of an unseen future,
of a life
gone dark.
May I speak to the manager
of this circus?
These elephants don’t leap high enough,
trapezists don’t fall far enough.
I’ve seen them fall
into nets,
now why not
into brambles?
Truly, what is this?
“Off with their heads,”
it’s all so played out.
If you’re going to give me
roses,
I want them painted
by the greats – I want Night Watch
in every petal,
Guernica in every flower.
If you’re going to give me
hearts,
I want them pulsing
and preserved,
with every vessel visible.
If you’re going to give me
heads,
I want them
still howling,
still cackling,
still jesting for us all.
What
am I even
paying you for?
Would you like me
to turn you
into a red rose, too?
No?
Then
chop chop.
perhaps my hands, too,
could disappear into the mist.
as a child, i dreamt of flight –
fairy wings to burst through
my shoulder blades – fins
to sprout from my feet.
there’s a piece that wishes
to be weightless, high above
the ocean floor, high above
the shore, high above
this pale blue dot – until i see everything,
bathed in sunlight, the dollhouses
i get to play with. another step out –
another step from shore –
and the pins and needles
forge my limbs into ice blocks.
your sea foam hands envelop me
in freezing, exhilarating here.
you here – salty and breathtaking
and ceaseless and fleeting –
you keep me heavy.
higher and higher,
you grow with the moon –
and before i know it,
i’m up to my neck in you,
my wings frozen shut.
you hurt me.
but you hold me.
and there will come a day
when the children play in the blackened soil
and stare at the mountain peak
and make pretend
about the monsters at the summit.
and there will come a day
when the climbers
drag their gear to the top,
camp out in the crater,
and call the mountain
“conquered.”
and there will come a day
when the soil
is fertile again,
because god has blessed it so,
and the grapes they grow
are called perfect and heavenly,
and there will come a day
when the castings
wither away
to the ash that they once were
and the histories
become stories, become tales,
become myths.
and they will say “there’s nothing to fear,
let’s stay here.”
When I find myself on the cliffside,
the seagulls having their way with me,
I imagine that last sunset we watched together.
At least here,
there is something to be felt.
Their many cries, some kind of chorus
of violence. All a part of earth’s cold order.
Not endless – nothing is endless –
but something
immortalized, nevertheless.
If a tree falls in the woods
and there are no birds left
to remember it – all its wailing
washed away to the seas –
it still made its sound – it’s last
gasp for air, last grasp for footing.
All of me wants all of that –
something left to give to the land.
i am splintered apart
by lightening strikes
the traveling lights crawling up my spine
my hands of brittle pottery
can’t hold much without cracking – can’t write much
without shattering
the sturdiest structures
can bend in the breeze, sway with the winds
and the shifting cartography,
or else sink
into the hungry sea
whose many mouths are always open
and waiting to receive me
there’s an i
that i’ve torn from my life, a letter
i’ve ripped from my name
what’s missing
beyond the perforated edge
there’s presence, then there’s absence – there’s before,
then there’s after.
threats
left like flowers
at my door.
it stormed on valentine’s day
like i’ve never seen before.
another record
shatters the scales –
trees snapped back –
dogs cowered under beds –
1… 2… 3…
the seconds between flash
and thunder,
the distance you fall
from me.
lights that flicker in the rafters,
as spiders
spin their coffins.
i don’t know
how folks survive lightning strikes –
their blood boiling,
veins expanding
into tattooed scars.
i don’t know how i’ll survive,
my body
touched by sun –
as in breeding
the blemish
out of us
pure
as a metric
for sameness
for a new
elemental identity
pure
as in skimming
the fat
from a body
my body
distilling down and
down and down
pure
as a way
of separating
us from other
impunities captured
in the
heating process
pure
as the diamond
set against
a flannel graph
carbon atoms
in perfect array
stretched thin
under pressure
and scorched
into lifelessness.
for any and everything –
for the drab
and the drag –
the birthday
and the last day –
nothing
a little party city
can’t fix.
who ever decided
that colored air
was the thing
for all occasions?
you usually
hate balloons,
hate the way they
POP!
and ricochet out
into sound
and nothing:
everything you fear.
what is
a balloon,
just a nothing
made something?
like one
of ariel’s things?
thing 1,
thing 2?
a doodad
independence day aliens
wouldn’t know
what to do with –
how would you
blow up
nothing?
spring forth
from open ocean –
stretch out
your fins.
there come
soft rains
of whale bones –
a waste
that will sustain
abundance.
gold mine –
all mine –
neptune caught
in a fisher’s net –
in the name
of a hunger
as deep
as the marianas.
filled
to overflow
of marine
snow.
there come
soft rains
pierced
by echoed prayers –
prayers
to the older gods –
neptune turn
into open ocean.
miles to go
to reach the depths.
sing perhaps
a little louder.
there will come
soft rains
and endless seas
of snow.
Carpe Noctum 