Electric river
stretch bluely
past events
and their horizons.
Fingers spider
by facespans
to ***** in
the semidark.
Cannot see
past "do not want"
but I could write
it in the sky
to last for
these blackened
hands.
Electric river:
it does not flow
out of any
incredulous
uncertainty.
It advances
azurine, ringing
past words, works
and their echoes,
past influences
and their ******
circles.
No web and no
fine web
can confine the
austerity in its
loose dimensions.

Startling, simply.
***** form of white;
Pillar of morals
Tied to fables
That are taller still
Than even he.
And yet the sight
Takes wind from
The watcher.
Rapt eyes stroll
Languorously across him.
Form unconcealed
And no appendage
Draws undue focus.
Stale cupola air
Becomes spring in his repose.
His smirking dead eyes
Mock spectators.
He leaps and vaults
Through the deadened vaults,
Then furrows his brow, opens his mouth.
Mute shouts ring terribly here like slung stones.
Were he out in the elements, the earth itself might
Gape monstrously to sputter out, "Startling, certainly."

He sits on a porch-swing dying of heat.
The midday sun is merciless.
It juts out a golden face to ****
To test
To accuse.

He strokes the side of his face.
There is misery here but not remorse.
Sweat runs down the hollow of his neck
Traces his neck
Falls away from his neck.

He closes his eyes against the day.
And more besides.

The sky burns in opposite colors now.
His eyelids play the stars and scenes of an afternoon.
After a time, blackness swallows the image.
He is perfectly closed.

Off past the gate sound cicadas,
Locusts, call them here,
Like an African choir concealed to chant
Concealed to slough away
Concealed from commentary.

He hears the door and feels her weight
on the swing. The cicadas seem louder.
She's come outside to speak with him
To speak at him
To speak about him.

"I hate you," says a voice but not in words.
"I love you too," sounds the other with a tone that says more,
Much more besides.

The dusk is usually far more perfidious
But not tonight. The weather is still,
The sun has nothing more to declaim.
She is perfectly closed.

The wind is my lover
and the water that pivots
beneath the sky above me
could be any color for all
the attention I'm paying it.
For in the speed that whips
me about in a circle,
this world loses meaning.
As my hair gains independence
and my skin darts behind me
in the afternoon heat
and my limbs numb utterly
to victorious speed,
all my cares and leaden ties
are brought to light
and shown their insubstantiality;
they are spat derisively
into the dusk.

For the wind is my lover
and he sates my hungers
and visits with my youth
and quiets my longing
for sense with every velvet
torrent that passes through
my open hand.

And when the boat stops, I will break apart.
Would that the wind would grasp me and pull me
aft into the blackness beyond the shore.

Rather I did, once. No longer.
We were magnetic, tectonic.
Constantly and consistently converging.
Unfolding.
Seamlessly (it would seem) arranged on
Memory's golden stage.
But today, tomorrow,
Where moves are flimsy and unsure
Lines drop from lips in silence,
Unraveling like gauze,
As we both wait for alarums that cannot sound.

I feel anesthetized, don't I? I—
And the curtain will be merciful.
A breath of disdain perhaps, disastrous.
Your touch is autumn.
I eclipse the sun, suffocate you from it.
Take your warmth.
Leave you colder than Ophelia
And bloodier than Brutus.
My inadequacy was once your balm,
A catechism to ensure another world
That we both know isn't sound.

The very least you can do is become like Icarus
Who was beautiful in his fall
And silent at his end.

When the patterns glide by
Comparing swatches of the "is" and the "could be"
It's easy to get caught in
Things that don't, couldn't exist:
Pressed and glossed but cut off completely
As by a film,
Just like the picture show.
A sallow barrier reducing profundity to charcoal etchings.

My eyes fog over with winter breath.

Brother I do not know who you are.
Though like a pious gypsy I pray
to odd winds and set down
curious cards that I might
     grow to know you better.
     Little Moses, stolen in the
     night without your blanket,
     without your breath. How is
it some wandering seed
like you can stay my
watery mind? Sistered with a white
gem in a secret tide, you
     surface long after the
     scene is closed; you follow
     me home and sing like
     a thousand years of
May beneath my windowsill.
But as I say, the scene is
done, swallowed mother firefly
by the fluorescent night. So
     gather your things: these
     thoughts do not become,
     nor would they ever become.
     You’ve a hand like kite string
And I'd never hold on. All my
cards gutter in the wind
and the candles cannot be read,
not as dark as I've allowed it be.

I hear a song my brother sings
that echoes in the rock
from which my soul was hewn and that
shall never be forgot.