I

Whether it is behind and hidden
or bare and in front
the thing itself makes me stir
every single day.

Because I am a secret thing
myself.
Here, I can feel my skin, feel the feel,
and still not discover the thing
discover me.

And when one has lost his visions
(back to where those things came)
he cannot make himself out of these either
anymore.

So he lifts upon his shoulder
a thing unknown. Deemed
unbearable.
Spends his days trying to
make amends for things that are
long closed, blackened and
irretrievable.
Continuously falls in love
again with
the occurrence of them
their beginnings and their endings.

II

But there is no painless way to leave
this thing, marked in your voice and birth
and name.

And if I were to write you a poem
about this thing, it would be just a
river of questions, crashing upon
a skull desirous to melt and flow at last
with it—wherever, till whenever.

And yet
there actually is a thing called a sun
that is not an idea in a sky but
a star in a space
of burning gases, exploding and slowly
extinguishing itself, next to us, too.

III

Soon I will know gravity,
become its acceleration. Become the pull
of all things into each other.

IV

Eventually
we all forget why we cried about this thing.
For yesterday could have been years ago.
And tomorrow you could be just about to
die, reaching forward, done waiting, those final
moments.
But today is today. Now will always be now.
And is
is only.

At which point we cry again
overwhelmed now
with very different tears, by the very same
thing.

Was what my love had loved
Or maybe knew   so simply loved
That we were going to die   We
Simply follow a loop

Only tied when time is untied   in

Death   the most extreme
Emotion   close to death of all
Emotion   the thinning curl
Where Yin approaches

Yang   I

Keep dying and resurrecting as I

Love

In the bottom of the subway mouth
foamed in summer sweat and the ink
of rodents on chipped slate tunnels,
in the breath of the compassionless lick
of dirt swabs, of empty swayings,
murmurings, square eyes, and slit mouths,
where a trembling roar like an elsewhere
lion is an unfortunate savior, I saw
in front of me a real dream, just barely
(and perhaps not)—but in one of its
moments, I did feel cracked—felt the
sudden unbelievable shockwave of
shattered skull heat, white, blinding, a
quick wisp of eternal time, before back,
to the undream of dreams. This real.
Laughable and despairable. Of hot
waiting, dying lassitude. Before going
on cramped with the others. Nowhere.

I have stopped wondering
what I am wondering
and have begun instead to wonder
what the black cat is wondering
living on my street and wandering

itself out of the dark embrace
of trash cans. Darting, stopping.
Always in feral yellow trance, if not
in coy dance, if not
in careful vigilance of us. But always

it seems in wonderment. As of
a species been cast
to a strange foreign place, a million
light years from home. Wondering
what it is wondering, and easing

the endlessness of mine.

I wish up the falling mountainside
scree rolling      past in foams      a tide
wishing down      against
as if my purpose was      the act
to counteract

or along a barreling oceanside      in
frost and high noon
above      a relinquishing patchwork of sky
me      harvesting shells      drinking rain
                      walking until

the dive into      whatever else      which is
not art      nor love-song      nor peace
but for all     their origin      before they became
word      and I      this quiet man
                      *inexpressible desire

Lift above. Lift carefully.
What is under may come undone
if your hands are unsteady.
Sure to become gone wisps, a pungent spoor
for whipping your head around
but never a surprise when it returns
in a subway conversation with your friend
all drunkenness and perception
before coming home to die on your bed
throwing up hell from inside you
acid and convulsions
remembering what animal you are
that something can subside and something else
can emerge
thoughtless
truer than your certainty.

For isn’t true now
the clammy skin you’ve questioned?
True now the ribs of your throat
writhing like Amazon leaves?
Truer still
your biology abstract? You?
Animal living by nature?
Which means not without you, means just
relinquishing
everything to what is
before having become or going to be.

Such as the time of day
the sky knows it’s dying.
Fountains an orange-red frondescence
that won’t last at all, half-hour at most,
yet which, in that pale existence,
manages as if to turn itself inside-out
as if younger, as if expressing repressed
ecstasy
in the being unknown
before upheaval—the saturation
of openness by color becoming
a moment in blandness worthwhile.

A pause to hear
your legs dangling over nothing.

And a phoenix sky, falling
this very Sunday
when not doing much
became so much
and now
somebody’s lit the sky again, the dusk
feeling a blooming
washing the streets and rooftops
in a new canary dawning

new light              also darkening
but only                as if only

a veil spun of bird wings
is lifting above
and carefully over
what is dying.

cannot live by living
sublimate

intractable life the way
a poet of mangled hands burns away
incessant blankness
to a hot glowing moment wherein
his excision, sought after,
lives.

Whatever way is taken
a fire therein will burn

to majestically disfigure
the unfigurable in your life

the way a drinking straw made of
plastic transforms
in lips of flame

to curlicued ribbons and
blazing involutions, coiled springs and
brightly curled
imaginings of crimson.

Choose to run
and so too will the fibers in your hamstrings
curl, glow crimson
as under fire.

Sit quiet on the marble steps
of a dried fountain in Union Square
watching the looming arch through
the crisp distance of night

and so too will your eyes become
incendiary orbs
heating the air around
to transient veritable sharpness

as if suddenly, every piece of
stone or root of tree
has been released from
a hold
and could at any moment
flinch for you. For
just your witness
and nothing more.

Attempt to find the dream of death
hidden within the taste of
your one beauty’s lips
and so upon the kiss will she

burn, explode!
in quick high flame
to a pile of
shrunk dust and scintillating
strands of hair.

Whichever way, all can burn
to release its true form—hardly sweet
seeming unbearable

before curling
just barely sweet, just bearably, always just
necessarily so.

And slowly, you are already
curling in the flames.