drift

and i was picking pieces of myself
off the sidewalk
because there was no one there
to do it for me or to watch,
or to listen to the gulls screaming
carrion cries fighting over what bits of me i
missed:
a thumbnail here, or a
knucklebone bleached white
since morning, or a
hair, a tooth, a stone.
as the day frothed its last
against the shore, beating itself red
against the stalwart waves,
the impotent assemblage
groaned and cracked
and took up her place,
breathed a sodden, brackish breath:
asking where had the time gone,
and could we get it back,
and would it ever be possible
to sleep
without falling apart
in the meantime?

and who shall follow after?

there's a place for the women like us
somewhere by the red rocks and the sea
where the breeze tangs of iron and salt
and the waves move more slowly in
the mornings.

there's a place set aside for the people like us
forged half from truth and half from fiction,
braced against the cliff where the seabirds nest
in great exposed stone catacombs ripe with
lichen and ossifying urea.

i stand with my toes hanging off the edge
where solid ground gives way to pure horizon,
waiting for what i know only in the unknown:
fathom only in the faceless forms of mythic artifact.

i will hear my calling once i have moved
beyond befores and afters, beyond the sweet
and terrifying certainty of now, or of then, or then.
when i am myself subsumed into the uncouth wind,
stripped of physic consciousness, borne upon
the biting, crafty wind,

only when i reach this formidable Beyond,
our febrile Eden will begin to grow
within what's left of me.
our ferocious, indeterminate Eden--
glutted on blood and lymph and
lachrymal distillations--
will reach Before every before,
and After each and every after,
and rescue us from ourselves
and from each other.

i stand with my toes hanging off the edge
of a cliff ever dropping clean and quick
into the sea. i take each step back, and i realize
that i am content to wait
for inspiration. i realize
that i am content to lay myself
before the reddening sun, the composite moon.

someday i will sing your song
to the stones and the waves.
today i am content to listen
as you sing to me.

sui, sibi, se, se

sometimes i wonder what happened to her.
she always seemed so small
the corners of her mouth drawn down
brows forward, furrowed,
eyes ever wet with the myriad tears
she would never learn to shed.
i remember how she used to take two
corners of the sky, pull down and spin and
wrap it around herself like a blanket,
a shawl of moon and stars to breathe
and hide in.
i remember how
she used to be part of everything, and
everything used to be a part of her.
and when she folded in on herself
she disappeared, collapsed
into a singularity
of darkness and light,
of music and silence,
of crippling faceless fear and
ferocious unstoppable hope and--
her gaze, her smile, was the event horizon
beyond which no soul could ever hope
to escape.
i remember when i found myself in her orbit:
a speck of dust tumbling headlong
around the body of a star--
but then she smiled, and looked down
at the ground, and in the darkness
all I could see
was the fitful glow of a firefly
clinging to the palm of my hand.
sometimes i wonder if the wind finally
tore her apart, scattered the pieces
like ashes from the burnt-out aftermath
of arson--or if the sea finally
came, sought her where she slept,
swallowed her wholly and quietly and
brought her back to the deepest place
where the water crushed down comfortingly
against her poor, wounded skin,
always full to bursting
with images and ideas and insight and
everything she couldn't contain
and everything that couldn't contain her.
i wonder if she is buried in the earth somewhere
or if she still wanders between the trees
of some forgotten forest,
her fingers understanding the texture
of each tree, each flower, each sunbeam,
each thought.
i wonder if it is even possible for her to die
and if so, what that might look like
and if the world itself would still exist
once she had departed from it.
mostly i wonder where she might have gone
and if she might consider
coming back
to be with me again.

Haiku or smth idk

世界の名
意識入り箇所
この眉間

Sekai no na
Ishiki iri kasho
Kono miken

The name of the world
Acquires its consciousness
Right between these eyes

Nineteen Sixty Five

Blushing light settles like gauze upon
the worn-smooth floor...
hangs suspended, condensed,
in the soft and foreign air:
many-winged insects
stretched across a raftered sky.
Here sings everything with nothing to lose:
here sings nothing, floorboards and shoes and
learning how to float is never easy
rounded calves picking up
sharp heels,
light caught, felt, held ransom
in necklaces and
rhinestones and
fingernail polish and
striking green eyes.
Youth is no object.
Time savored here is free--
feral--feckless--fresh--
fierce in the lingering twilight
pure and cynical and absolutely
Breathless.
This world belongs to her.
And whether these weary walls
realize it or not,
whether these intricately carved and courted people
realize it or not,
the fight has already been won.
The Swan spreads her wings.

Excerpt from a Letter to Nan, July 2011

It feels like time just slips away so quickly. All of a sudden it's time to sleep again, and I've hardly done anything. I feel like I live and move in an impossibly viscous liquid, while the rest of the world breezes through air. Time to breathe. But what am I breathing?