Did you weep too?
when we put down our cups of hot tea and joy
they seemed to speak to the wavering air
some reticent secrets of themselves or us
I thought: death is like my father now
it names me, not after, for itself
and I smell the petalled incense of its security
security…
Security. Security.
I thought: we are written
you pull right, and I pull to left
and we go stumbling forward to papa
I thought: I am a cold bottle put in the day
I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
and then again, I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
Did you whimper?
sweetly like a child
I could have loved you if I wasn’t afraid
You say: I am always afraid
You say: it is my excuse for everything
You act so brave, you think I do not think
I have seen you in the velvet dark
crystalline eyed and thin,
not yet the woman that becomes my sin
You are just like me

I thought the eyes would swell and mama would know
so, I stopped and quietened
breathing like a valley, sniffing like lizards
We heard the city sing by
I thought: it is like a train
its tail hooked to the nose, it moves in a circle
and we are in it
Say, do you recall at all?
not more a nigh to pass, but the sentimentality fades,
and we ought to go

Say, stay?
Say, stay for a dance
However pained– a waltz of held-hand and shoe
I will try not to tremble
like that acrid tongue of forever time
Now your forehead gleams with the smear of gloom
and we are wont to let it dry
wont then, to become canvases
wont then, to hide them away, in slots of unlit places
(like ******* or... palm-on-palm or... in between bookshelves or lip)
with so many others
Remember that one? Then that, then that, then that
when we wore our shameless dresses of terror and shame
and we cursed the holy heavens of youth,
when we fought, when we fought, when ran like laughter
There was so much grief
I thought: it will eat us
I thought: I will never escape this
this name that papa wrote
on the paper of my breath
we will always be here, babes, fumbling in shawls
and pleasing the house
plaint and faint and so much like fear

Did you weep too?
I was astray in the street, I couldn’t quite see
I could’ve kissed you like the girls on TV
but mama was everywhere, and she was dressed in papa’s shadow
She said
She said—
She needn’t say anything at all

Say, did you weep at all?
I said I was afraid,
I said then so much of it, I forgot of you
Say, I don’t think you did.

You are an idol of stone
You do not move, you stand at the doorway and watch
You do not talk
You stand at the doorway and watch
When you thunder downstairs to your mistress
Your wife sits blue-eyed on the bed
That is old and ugly, its wood full
Of red insects that bite, but you
Will not let her sell it
For you think it is just fine

When you drive away with your mistress
There is laughter in the house
There is a board-game
Of fickle fate and try
That your wife and your children toss dices upon
And there is so much chatter and so much sound
All red things crawl back
Into the deep deep dens of the bed
That your wife got from her own house
And that you will not let her sell
For you think it is just fine

When you laugh, it is like storm
Sounding through the fingers of the city
And you make so much noise, it startles the sky
It makes the fat dead TV wince at its past
It makes the gruff old drawers never want to move again
And you are always here
Such loving god:
We cut the stone from which you came
Into pieces, pieces, we carved so many of you
Now you are in every doorway
And you do not move

When you return from your mistress
You are happy
You put the new TV on, loud and the news
Of the city flood the house
You are a news yourself
You cough like a steel glass falling in the silence of the night
When everything is sleeping, you cough like its bouncing
That goes on and on, and like its spinning stop
You cough and you chew on the furniture wood
And you make so much noise

She cannot sleep

Well, after, you are still; grey-eyed and corpse
And the insects come; and they do not bite stone

I am made of infatuation, shame and forever gloom
You could not fall
This is not the chessboard of your dreams
No pawn makes—
No bishop makes
The queen takes, is taken an equal
This is not an aisle of rebirth
Or some sombre remembrance
It halts, it halts
The numbers lessen
I did not abandon, I am still here
Yet, a halt lingers
Like death stuck on the precipice of throat
A life of a single lifetime of a thought
I am energy, a little restless
But restless so out of the nature of self
Like the eye of a rook
On the king through a rook

A stupor unblinking
Like a sharpening of a dream
The knight-slide like an Arabian sword
The king scuttles
Rook takes rook, king takes rook

I fancied myself a manly dream
But it doesn’t work like that, does it—
The game writes, and children play
Now I wait the shameful minutes away
(And I watch you hands, so patient, simple
Say, are you dead or pleased?)
And I watch your hands
I should’ve looked up when I had the chance
Now the brooding leaves
And my eye hardens
Father, you have won
With a dream so well, you played just right
I should have not worshipped the pawns like that

Fear is a fire that eats the soul
Muffles the brain in a cold body’s triumph
Toss the world from hand to hand
Say, praise the petty warrior heart

Why do I do this? This mumbling
How many Discord VCs to lurk through?
Silence becomes; nobody hears the girl talk
Yet she is good with word, think one once did say

Bold with brushstrokes I dream to make
Yet never the warrior I’d one day paint
As mice we scuttle, say, as a mouse I do
She’s so shy, is said, and I seethe - I stutter

Words are we, and the absence as well
Bumbling thunder that tricks a tongue
Fear is a fire that eats the soul
With its carnal hands, it is so so sweet

I yield to mumble, the scuttle of old
This is not the pretty stumble of youth
World bloomed a bud, bright-eyed and blue
Called to me, it calls me still

Called to me, they all do still
Curse the Icarus eyes of song
We couldn’t look through, we couldn’t do

Gold did lure, it glittered too
Stroked the wings - I couldn’t do
                                        Lord, I couldn’t do

I was happy once - when sadness loomed
Over gangly shoulders and looked
With its bare black eyes upon the world
Upon which I looked, I laughed pale-toothed
And gaunt, and startled its wings that clothed
My pretty green arms and made me lean
into the silly embrace

Sweet, ghastly vehicles churned
Before childish eyes, my childish eyes, and
All night long I watched the city chase its tail
Do you understand? There is a gloom
To trap the soul. The laughter but boiled
Oozed out like ants from a bottle of sweet -
Canvas-skinned, like torn milk it was, and
I chased it like a babe before a bee,
Then like a babe I feared its pretty pinpricks
There is a beast in fear that touches
The young

The gape of a cold cold crown that makes
Even the crescent ugly - of rains run stale
Through the ages of dance, of wheat fields’
Jolly feathers and the merrymaking
Of the nights when warm things creeped
Nearer and said things so gentle, they lead
Through paths of grey caress toward
The golden sun

There is a gloom to eat the sky
A joy that mumbles like dry thunder, that wobbles
Like ripe clouds through the winds, swept off
From the heights…

Sweet, the night lifted her head and nodded, and
Sweet, all good things drooped like prayers
before stone - sweet, the crescents,
Of indent and star, where holy terror
Had loved us slow, never felt so small as did
In the leaning - the yielding - us, beautiful:
Bone-eyed and bare, shuffled off from the heights
Of silver youth, as ****** birds, as ****** boys
Through the winds, and we melted
Sifted, out of ourselves and into the honeyed
Embrace of old

We forget the tides as they claw on
Into the purple oceans of old
We forget the shores
Thousands, ten thousands
And then so many more
As ***** mix in with the seagulls
And seashells we lose
Through toiling of wave wave wave
Everything passes