Monday, March 31, 2014

Orphaned into Each Other's Arms


It’s as if you just returned
From somewhere west of the future
And find yourself unpacking books
You haven’t seen in twenty years

Sudden distances appear in the sun-stained room
Global meridians unfold from your open hands

You cleave stubbornly to a hole in the air
With all the rest of your songs even
Without language

It’s okay

There will be singing
Beyond the final dusty hiss
Of human thought

You’ve got them now
Swimming in your stomach
The skinstripped words
You drank from my mouth

Saturday, March 29, 2014

The Sound That Woos Your Lips


The sound formed before
Your first breath

The sound of nobody’s voice
You recall so close to your ear

The sound open as a lidless eye
That waits for morning

The sound rolling out of itself
Not shouting but tolling soft alarms

The unasked for sound
The yet-to-be-begotten sound
Never to be forgotten sound

Not the sound of the eruption
But what you hear when ash falls three nights later

Breathe and Be You


Your name
Your name so near and graspable

Your name
Your name unfurled at half-mast

Your name
Your name among wandering stones

Your name
Your name kneeling in the river

Your name
Your name open and void

Your name
Your name unmasted and swinging free

Your name
Your name aslant in the skull socket

Your name
Your name ensilenced in the shroud of rain

Your name your name your name
Blue as your eye beneath a stony lid

Thursday, March 27, 2014

When the Ring on Our Finger Awakened


First was the unflamed word
Blanched with annulment

Then the call of sleepdoves
Fell like silenceblossoms
All around us baroquely flamboyant

We too shed petals and everything
Slipped away growing larger and larger but
Invisible enough to see

We saw day’s flowered axe
Unsplit night’s feathered anvil

Right enough we stood
Handfasting beyond sanctity
Listening to the nearswept tumult 
 
White-bearded truth itself
Pelted us with deaf answers

We chewed each name-torn scrap
We swallowed every flash and shadow

Each word that sang us into we


Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Solving the Riddle of All Your Hopes


Your cathedrals
Your transparent cathedrals

Where nothing waited
Transcendent in the wounded moments
Floating in singular frames of indifference

Transformed into no end of space

Your hours
Your hours breathing
Your hours breathing quietly
Your hours breathing quietly just
Hearable in the chamber of hurricanes

Then came
The impassable word
Shot through with radiant silence

Scooped out of darkness
One breath at a time
One more word like this one
One more mouthful of silence