received instruction, piece.

what received instruction fails to teach us
is that it is possible to escape flesh
that if we leaned back,
back more, and gasp-second
as the chair falls off its last leg,
we will fall out of our bodies.

we will be boundless from ourselves,
free to dream-fall, though eyes 2-inch wide

we will re-enter earth under no false pretenses
hatched from wombs
of half a dozen nearly silent she-vessels
on their steady voyages to Middle.

dawn, sweet collection, dawn.
and lift hands to your cool, alabaster face.
the longest should be directed to 3/3.

you’ll scoff. i’ve seen it.
but trust your hands and it will be.

- from a place of yes.  

at some point, you feel your body trying to escape your body,
as if moving upward, a skeleton lighter than the blood-air surrounding it.
it breaches,
separates from its flesh tomb
to be cold, naked, and piercingly stung
before our sun and our god.

Maybe my eyes should be two cameras
flashing blinding through nights
divorced from any semblance of logic or reason.

maybe before i should leave earth,
i'll have five minutes to sit
and sift through the images,
choosing 12 or 18 favorites to take with me
into my next life as a blade of grass.

maybe that task is impossible.
i pray that it is.

Belle Dame, II

you wonder if you would have looked good
with finger waves in 1922.
it’s pointless to think about,
but it still floats languidly toward you,
one of the frequent gondolas that scratch,
and ****, and drift wandering semite from shore to shore of your skull.

the sun never sets on it, after all.

the other ships,
ancient and moaning,
lean and bow according to waves of a life-heavy sea,
its tides divorced from any semblance of reason,
rhythm  doesn’t lie next to it any longer,
its shape is just an aftertaste now.

your throat is in flames, by the way.
no one took voice this time.
she left of her own accord,
and she’s planned this for weeks,
every gesture, forward motion, and utterance
that would enable her escape from inside you,

this time, it’s pointless scouring the corners of the empire to find her.
you have to remember she’ll come back on her own.
that the harshly lit fluorescent reality will validate her,
or it won’t,
and it’ll reject her like your body is currently doing to the reattached finger you almost lost when you were three.

i need you to pray she makes her boat on time,
and don’t think so much of where she’s going.

do me a favor
and clutch the string of pearls
that gently tightens around your unscraped adam’s apple.
you can’t do it, can you?
don’t worry.

when you come to,
the first thing you’ll think is
“the **** is that smell?”
you realize it’s you,
soaked through boxer briefs,
child-shamed again,

only this time, there is no excuse.
left leg still,
right one twitch,
you wonder when it is you’ll pick yourself up and get over this one.
how many hours and minutes it’ll take,

after all, the “day’s” just starting for you.
you must be the palest native this side of third,
because your personal mantra happens to be
“don’t put my burnt bacon skin out in direct sun.”
you ******* fern.

maybe on another night,
when you clutch the string of pearls,
in shock,
they’ll be there,
maybe they won’t melt so quickly this time.

snow came and took my voice.
possibly, i was sleeping,
birth-curled against the wall
forehead cooled,
bringing the sky
which reflected the ground-glow
to the place within,
it falls softly there, too.

i always love it best untouched,
where it lays, mimicking lines of beasts beneath it.
maybe those are your lines
or mine,
or what if they’re propped up pillows
in the blanket to resemble human form
so we could sneak out past curfew.

we walk in lopsided paths, powdered felt shifting our boots from under us,
maybe my voice is over there in vein-branch trees.
hiding thirty-year-soldier-dedicated.

nature tells us we don’t imbibe of these berries in winter,
for they don’t grow naturally here when foreheads lie, spooning cold walls.
they grow on islands that have never seen this stark leveling,
nurtured by children little older than us
do you know they bid each berry farewell as they pluck them from the vine?
they believe they’ll never in their lives see them again

in another time there was an old man
walking around the woods behind the house.
no one believed me when i said i saw him walk,
quiet, graceful, with divine ease across ground-up leaf.
the color of nutmeg we swallowed just last week
stupid-young-and-pretty
too pretty,
too full of effort.

obvious pencil thick outlines,
**** us for our method.

maybe we were brilliant once
ripe and full
to the brim, even.
so the overflow brushes down our sides,
making you whimper sweetly,
****** again underneath the weight of two,
three,
back to *******
leaves a ring on the table.
should have used a coaster.

should have done a lot of things.
but it is what it is, as you said.

i wonder if you mythologize us as we do you.
look at me.
feel my marfan, thai-dancer fingers under each eye.
what will they look at in two,
three,
back to two years?
I don’t dare tell you this,
but one night when I heard your heart beating
I knew you’d out-live both of us.
and on another night you’ll ask me what happens,
but that’s no where near the right question to ask.

i can tell you a last minute and a half as I recall.
you lie with your hands, flecked with the tiniest boulders
each one a marker of where she laid her own fingers on you.

the thin lace veil flutters violently over each of your orbs,
when the the sound of the wind flowing through them is deafening enough,
it gets up from the seat by your bedside.
“where are you going” your lips are so dry
and we haven’t been here for sixty years to moisten them.
“you are a miserable old **** and you will not have the satisfaction
of being exempt from dying alone.”

it sits somewhere inside a cave,
unseen from street level
deep within it,
parallel to dormant husks of former beasts.
accessible only through divinity’s eye.

climb down,
feet unseen in each step.
but you’ll still feel them there
kicking against earthen layers
they’ll crumble under foot.
don’t worry, though.
it stays in place

rope to take you there,
to here

left fingers violin trembling,
it sounds even better down here, doesn’t it?

slip
bounce organic against the earth walls,
and tumble, foot over brow
over eye,
crash land sweetly
so the breath escapes
extruded through your chest
through your lips

eyes unfocused
though fixed on the pin needle light you climbed through

you wake.
hair in your vision,
like cracks on the windshield,
like vines and branches
when viewed upward,
they’re pressed tightly
to the warm ***** of sky.

they belong there.
maybe you think you do, too.

so get up.
take someone’s hand

and walk
gelatin-leg up the stairs
possibly breathless, into the street.