voices occur now,
or sprout up, one next to another one,
rowhouses built between
the natural divets and gaps
in our sound.

at first the male one starts chanting,
a softer female one sings next.
she affirms the divine hollow in each of our centers.
she says the first stage of the self healing has already begun.

the marble people stare not at you,
behind you, not at anyone in particular.
hunched, and clutching their glasses, thirst unquenched

there aren’t many of them now,
originally, there were thought to be thousands,
breathing quietly among us,

after the man has paid dowry for our daughter,
i turn to her and whisper,
“i think i’ve lost my spirit,
misplaced it, otherwise it flew from me,
escaped through my mouth while I was sleeping.
it slipped through the barely lit crack of parted lips

when the child tugs at my apron strings,
what is my name but satan.
mistress river acid,
strip my legs of their skin with each step,
down to tendon, bone, and marrow.
i’ll wash up, limbless and parched.

we’ll stand, nubile and resplendent
beneath you while you sleep,
lobbing pebbles at your window,
while you’ll believe it to be rain,
commuting furtively into the pile of dead leaves
and crumpled tissues in the drain pipe.

you’ll ask us if we were there,
not believing voices beyond cave shadows.

we’ll lie, aged and eyelid heavy,
in sweet-earth-cupped-hands.

*~life's about to get real weird in the next ten seconds~

shortly before your cannon shot onto the surgical table,
the huddled mass of you
caught a glimpse of the eventuality.
‘other’-light razor lip
down the french door hinges of your chest.

when ash from the micro fires sets,
it is that indelible ink that will plague you,
through years of intimate stares at this,
the defining mark of your forehead
when it kissed
something on the other side of divine.

it’s very easy to be a narcissist in this place. everything we surround ourselves with should be an extension of ourselves, but herein lies the interesting part. “ourself” is never tangible. there is no specific visceral mass within our bodies that can be named “ourself.”

“ourself” resides in the spaces between tissue, and even within them, it is not so much its presence or absence, but the formation itself, and not the building, no stone or lattice, but the way and manner it was presented before “ourself.”

We walk to it in silence, passing over earthen layers of leaf and twig, never once touching dirt en transit.

Then it escapes vertically from a jungle less than ninety years old.

The Beautiful Monolith.

At one point when the jungle was young, it was an integral bridge of some great scheme of railroads but is now a cement Taj Mahal only undiluted, uninhibited youth could create.
 
Where alabaster paint found in post cards and archival footage had once been, several layers of outsider art, scratchings, bible verses and amateur-drawn genitalia are the monolith’s primer, base and top coat.
 
We walk past two crosses next to the river, one for a young man who had jumped into the three foot deep river from the monolith’s former train tracks, another carries no name but is nailed to a neighboring tree.

An unnaturally yellow tulip lies beneath this cross.
 
At the Monolith’s feet are vines with sprouts of two-or-three leaves each pointing arbitrarily in directions they can grow.

“And my, how they grow,” she whispers.
 
My Sunday dress, a former ivory table cloth of mother’s imagination is consumed by the jungle.

It is not tarnished, but given life. An existence it would not have known under mother’s elbows rained upon by her cigarette’s ashes. It is ‘colored-in’ life, like these are some vanilla pages of little nephew's coloring book.

I try to tell him, but he does not understand, and says that I shouldn't talk about things being “colored' because it makes me sound like a racist.

I laugh, plucking leaves from the tree bearing the unnamed cross and rub them across the Flat of my torso, leaving green streaks across the former tablecloth.
 
He whispers into my ear about taking me to the top of the Monolith. I nod and attempt to rest my chin on his shoulder, but he starts swiftly up the hill.

He tells me to “lose the prissy mary-jane’s” on my feet saying it would be easier to climb without them.
 
I do this, and my bare feet touch the leaves and twigs. The feeling is *******, but in real life, I don’t even know this word exists. We climb, resting halfway on an embankment in one of the Monolith’s Roman arches. The second half of the climb is slightly more difficult, but we reach the top.
 
The tracks are gone, replaced by a coating of gravel, rocks and beer bottles. And then I see it, the reason why the Monolith is beautiful. Two states converge on this spot where I stand, my tablecloth dress begins to take flight as I spread my wings. His mismatched eyes look at me with something close to amusement as he takes out a bright yellow acetate stencil.
 
The cupola of Animal Mansion pokes out from the jungle like my ***** right ****** in this former table cloth.  
 
A thin veil of red paint meets my waist. He gasps and his eyes widen, allowing me to see every individual real life pixel of his unmatched eyes, the hazel left, and the kelly-green right.
 
He mutters some kind of apology I cannot understand.
 
I respond by slipping off the tablecloth. They bounce slightly. You know which ones I speak of…
 
His eyes remain wide as he comes closer to me, telling me that I have to put my clothes back on. In his hands is the crumpled , grass stained, table cloth dress.
 
I ask if this is what he wants. He manages to say “yes” but apparently…not under these circumstances…or at least not on the Beautiful Monolith. I drop to my knees, and am able to unbuckle his belt before he pulls me up by my forearms.
 
My tears make it hard to see what is happening now…I feel my arms pushing him back from me, and then the sound of rocks tumbling out of place.

He is over the ledge now, flying through the portion of damaged railing where no fence stands. His mismatched eyes, the left hazel and right kelly-green stare warmly into mine.

In his hands is the crumpled, grass stained, tablecloth dress.
This, is see perfectly.

and then i am left,
at the upmarket stretch of sand
straddling this most unremarkable state,
quietly flicking my thumb against the blue lighter.

but it's too windy, at the water's edge
in an unremarkable state,
where no one recognizes me,
that bagpipes start playing

the wind acts against my fingers,
they are too delicate, too feminine,
no callousness ever affixed to these,
my ten silken extremities.

buddy didn’t tell me buddy was a two-spirit.
buddy rode into town,
blonde-horsed and golden god,
of my people’s cargo cult.

this was buddy’s second incarnation.
once before,
buddy rode into town,
we knew nothing of gold,
or time beyond the lengths of fingers.

buddy stood before us,
buddy showed us ourselves,
our unspoken intentions,
anointed us in oils,
buddy always said,
look up each night,
on a supermoon,
i leave and return within you endlessly.

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

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.

It tapers towards the bottom,
inverse conical,
mimicking an egg.

it is a tradition among these people,
to have in their hands,
even in youth
the urn that will one day house them.

their compacted fingers, lips, and eyes,
in lacquered earth bounty.

the urn that will one day house my ashes will sit on my shelf,
naked and ready.

atmospheric,
and actually quite lovely
or selcouth,
either way, it's time for us to retreat back into ourselves,
to fold delicately into, in two, in three segments,
tucked away until melting ice slides, skin-sheet
off our hairless arms
we yawn before sun gods then,
lids closed, yet light penetrates with branch-veins
so amber and pulsating.

I was caught in the wheel for 27 days.
my ring finger, left hand,
just below the knuckle.
flesh lay threaded through spokes.

lying there,
blood in cascade within my veins, away from the finger tip.
a bustling commute inside of me.

eyes upward, fixed there, even in rain.
overflowing in showers,
these bubbling iris pools.

I’ve had my fill,
and very swiftly i go.
on the mornings of journeys,
hesitation finds no home in me.

the only request i have is for a graceful exit,
swift, and defiant.

there are words in other tongues
for the things we do here,
which careen voiceless from ourselves,

we don’t mean for them to.
they escape, unlearned movement
repressed by nothing save for the eyes of others.

there exist lines in another direction,
an alternate plane unseen
silhouettes of fingers running through hair.

it dwells deep in my soul,
thirty meters down
where the canary does sing,
sweet nothing, sing.

don't let it stop.

please don't let it stop.

but when it does, that's when you run.
and you don't look back.

thigh to calf,
to foot,
to toe.

you make it to that elevator,

and you get out.
soot covered and white eyed,
so very white.

and you go home,
to that little girl who loves you,
and you smudge that gingham table cloth.

don't let it stop singing.
you can't afford to.

sounds of the engorged worm’s lumbering steps,
they pierce not so stinging as the golden glow of orbs outside your window.
Quietude will find no home here.
neither will that longed-for sense.

what we want,
the ‘soul sleep,’
rests further,
further still, and away from finger tips,

gently rest me in myself,
to sweetly mine the interiors of subterranean caverns,
within which, we held exiled domain for millennia before we were men.

that you would let me be your harbor.

grass blades gnaw at my backside,
they don’t mean to bite, they’re just fervent in their suckling.

finger knotted
mirror palm

it always felt more complete when it was just the three of us.
you, me, and the vast, faceless

upon him, you and i finger painted all these parallels.
places we would never see,
rabbit warren cabins we’d never trouble ourselves to clean,

big, stupid piles,
bodies lie vine tangled,
but something halcyon, no more.

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry, because this is the last you’ll see of this room.”

over time, after the border closure,
after the parades of death squads,
faces of our brothers and lovers cloaked in ivory.,

we learned to condense three people into one.
we learned to say less, our words short and curt,
save for hours after, or in between,
when we could warm our skinny wrists over an open flame,
dreaming of the heavy, 72-hour lemongrass day
when it was all just painted doors and blue lights as far as we could touch,

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry,
this is the last you’ll see of this room.
we won’t be back”

My jetlag had finally bid adieu in a land,
republic and former colony the size of my thumb,
but with the strength of bulls on steroids
running through
a field of democratic china shops.

and your money's no good here.
your name,
that silly outfit from little oz.

I have no pictures of myself here.
only a porcelain-plated version in orchid hues,
dwarfed by my favorite ivory window.

from which the fall would most certainly be glorious for
5
4
3
2
seconds.

when was the last time you howled with the wind
your voice curled upward,
jowls hadn’t formed yet,
will they ever?
will you roll out from under that lens?
the one slowly pressing itself down on you,
it’ll crush you in your sleep,

the last thing you’ll think, unfortunately,
is of its efficacy,
graceless, effortless motion of glass the weight of the world,
reducing you

but

don’t stop.
not until you fumble around in the bedside drawer,
(you know the one)
hardspine thick and full of fleshlights,
receipts, and ticker-tape fortunes.

within it, is the melted resin bracelet,
the one meant for dangling above a 3 am fire,
so its klein blue string burns,
slow, gentle flame against those wrists.

this is what it feels like.
there’s a reason the birds stir a little after midnight,
winged extras, lovers, and postal workers,
former mothers, pageant queens, and cannibals.
they’re here to remind you to rebuild that place within,

there’s a dock there,
fixed in a lake,
on it is our covered vessel,
its wooden frame forming a muslin tent.
sleeping, three minutes before sunrise.

you hand the prince a loaf of white bread.
he rises, and from behind velvet drapes,
the day is strong, and proud,
and her harshest light envelopes the folds of your face,
wrapping itself around every flaw,
letting none sleep undisturbed.

you realize the reason you
want to have a hand in keeping him alive
is in his eyes, and how they’re
color of a lake you fell into once, as a child.

i am ebinezer el-shabazz,
staff in hand, watch me plow field and wife.
stand behind me,
father leading progeny through earth bounty born of my hand.
you must stay behind.
i will protect you from the sun.
enclose you within gossamer wings,
you will ask why light rips through, still.
i say it is because you are not in your place of yes.
“but father’s arms are always a place of yes.”
i will devour you before your mind ripens,
for i do not want you to see mine gone so foul.

I stand,
tender and wild
at the water's edge.

I'm told,
as waves punch my knees,
that it's a great day
for a viking funeral.

Water's at my waist,
salt-wind pulling at me,
the soft veil covers me,
my face, hair
and extremities so cold and unevenly tanned.

I'm told,
that I look as if I'm waiting
for some fisherman husband to come home from see.
Maybe I am.

And then my mouth is full of saltwater,
as are my eyes,
my face,
hair,
grains of sand carried by the atlantic
travel the lifelines of both my palms

when I lift my chin above the wave,
I'll have wrinkles,
and a mortgage.

I'll be on the street.
clothed in a trench coat, trousers and my propriety,

when i'll be told
that I look as if I'm waiting.

Maybe I am.

Who will sail down
these laugh line Ganges rivers?
you should hope someone will.

turn to me and whisper,
declare, utter
that in the sinosphere,
they hire crying women

lest we pass, sail, transcend
within the silence we were
ushered onto this plateau with.

lest our Deity mistake the two.

scratch. stratch scratch scratch
on the back of your throat.

Two Hundred and Two Days ago
this would have been
your Angela’s Ashes spiral
into veiled, Catholic interment.

but you’re a heathen
and no criers will have been hired
no doters at your stone
come Dias de Los Muertos
as mother to grandmother,
as peasant to ****** Spanish friar.

but you have a plan.
you,
will be ground into a fine dust
and pressed into a record.

eight minutes on both sides

be not afraid,
be not a swan song.

For a few minutes,
I sat and had a full-on conversation
with a voice on the other end of the phone call
that may have been just a recording.

His voice was...perfect.
It lacked any of the audible stretch marks
an organic, troubled human could produce.
It floated, lilting.

His mouth sounded as if it had made its home on a strong, defined jaw.
Within it, two rows of pearlescent stones .

My own lips quivered, anticipating what it would feel like to have this mouth opera bellowing hot air, down, further.
It had finally happened.
I'd fallen in love with a ******* voice that was trying to sell me life insurance.

you want everything to look like the setting sun,
or a marble bull,
charging at your viscera.

what draws you to these lines?

nothing. i drift heavy,
only toes touch land, wood, and sea.
lustful, i was, so bound to myself i lie
in some endless death march,
bayonet, tracing silhouettes into my backside.
girls from home, mostly.
a mother,
friend,

what salvation are you seeking?

not salvation, only time.
seconds, to turn into minutes,
to somehow, without blinking
bind themselves into one life.

i’ll see what i can do.

charge at my viscera.
take tender care to not tip our boat,
for we will not fall,
but glide, listlessly into sea.

know what it is to thirst for nothing to surround you.
to rise and fall,
aether-bouyant through axes unknown.
which direction does your spinal fluid flow?
you’ll be uncertain.
only i know.
and i won’t tell you.

you don’t have to.

outside, it smelled of canned peaches,
and i knew the world was fertile again,
or i was fertile.
no one is more boundless ,
simply surviving a passage of time.
intimate nothing from gazes encountered,
no loss, and no redemption.

i’ve been standing at a folded alter for four years,
laundered, stiff white collars in iron maiden

pin ****** cascade,
it’ll be just the tip.
lol.

someone once told you to cover the bedroom mirrors before sleeping,
they’ll drain you of life by morning otherwise.
maybe it was the gourds. the ones that looked like birdhouses,
eye-socket pools gouged into dormant skin,
or you think it’s dormant.
you never assume your vegetables to be predatory.

i only ever feel most like myself in the mornings, immediately after waking,
and around 6:00 pm after i’ve peeled off my face.

We’re all here to see it come down.
Some of us can’t wait until that last stone is swept from its place forever, and some of us simply stand vigil,
like we’re about to pull the plug on our loved one on life support.

While we are at a perfectly safe distance,
it’s pretty **** strange that the workmen put us in this spot specifically.

We’re on the opposite side of the river, close to the town and anything that seems warm and appropriate.
And from here, we can see it all perfectly.
What Crane calls “The Beautiful Monolith,”
and its three crosses.
 
Some of us take pictures. Some of us even pull out rosaries.
People driving stop their cars, shut them off and simply wait.
And wait. And wait.

And then we hear a low, heavy grumble, like the sound of some giant old man waking up after a nap.
 
The bottom is the first to go,
then it moves up the long, slender legs that support the bridge.
Those famous arches warp out of shape while collapsing.
And it looks like the words painted on the bridge are moving.
Yes. They are moving, like the ticker at the bottom of a news report.
 
A beige cloud sits on top of the river, churning as more of the Beautiful Monolith falls. The bridge’s bases are still intact on opposite sides of the river.

We’re told they’ll be removed,
like unwanted tree stumps, by the day’s end.
 
The beige cloud is still writhing, fueled by turn of the century concrete.

And if we squint hard enough,
we can see through the beige cloud,
at the three wooden crosses on the opposite side of the river.
 
Now, they turn and stare at me.
The entire town, it seems.
Several hundred eyes that with no feeling to them,
just wanting answers.
They want to know why, but “why” doesn’t matter.
“How” would just leave them with more questions,
and “where” is something dangerous that should be left up to whatever forces control what is built and what is destroyed.

a certain clarity steps in from the night.
it shakes off a damp umbrella and fastens its closure.
the small ‘clip’ echoes in the hall.

or maybe it’s a snap.
clarity lays the umbrella down and there is rain water at my feet.

that these arms should house me should be plaster.
they’re all i know. at their ends are fingers that cannot bend,
yet i press my hand against them,

caress a dormer window or crown molding
            and they’d feel more compassionate.

but one doesn't need a home to love you back. there is no soul residing in between these walls. no greater being within the woodwork.

it left one morning, a note scrawled and barely legible made its way to the counter, and almost fell, november-soft under the garbage.

it left no forwarding address. but a quiet light comes and goes. flickering in its tiny dagger stabs at the interiors of your eyelids. let it flood the room and keep nothing covered.

I. missing poster, Kensington High Street

at what point did i vanish?
i did not evaporate.
i am still a collection of matter.
of energy, essence and intangible spirit.

it is from others, i have vanished.
it is to them i am lost, intangible,
the off-screen character,
the plot point in many a story too unremarkable to be seen.

my face lies plastered across walls in the borough
in various states of life.

but i am not here,
i do not stare state portrait shallow into you,
for i do not know you.

don’t think it couldn’t be you,
or do,
and prepare to exist,
sans living.

but you may ask “where?”

“where” may not exist.
it has no post code, no roman underlayer of brick.
no parisian layer of skull,
that is not where i lay.
if i lay.

“where” may not allow me my harsh whispers,
my last finger upon the cliff

“where” may call to me
from its halcyon planes.

come home.



II. The Dell, Kensington Gardens

what better a place to vanish from,
to trace my path from,
or what it will allow.

let my scent linger?
god may allow it.
i’m told the gardens’ gates are closed
promptly at dusk each day.

there are no street lamps here.
to be locked in after sunset is something other.
something indigo and sublime,

too early in the year yet for crickets.
it was this blanket i knew last before departure.

and yet even during the day, The Dell is sealed off from the public, like vast wings of a stately home.

it is pristine, this vanishing point.
seemingly untouched by the sickness of our humanity.

its miniature waterfall bisecting the scape
like the crack in our god’s head that birthed athena.

i don’t think it will ever be revealed to me,
my loved ones or god himself if i have chosen this place
or if it chose me.




III. The Dell, continued.**

the gardens that day were trapped in the faintest, yet most distinct bubble of brisk english detachment.

i walked, hand in pocket through its paths,
admiring Victoria’s memorial to her beloved,
thinking how we always view her as this austere widow.

but we forget that she too, once loved and loved so deeply.
that it so moved her, and changed her.

we forget that the divine can also be wounded, albeit not lethally, but with subtle, lingering pangs.

it was this thought that fueled my feet towards the Dell,

with its rolling, sample-sized hill,
its ageless trees with their hooked branches
in various un-regal poses.

i must have stood in admiration for five, twelve minutes before it dawned on me with the most pristine clarity:

i need to be a part of this place,
forever bound to it.
a statue in its gallery.  

this is where the trees have come from.
they are the shells of former lovers,
rooted in the deep, richness of the Dell’s soil.

we bend and undulate through centuries,
we are the dancers forever spinning,
never to rest,
for whom would want to?

I.

something within me,
maybe its my amigdala,
misses the oven-turned-gentrified clot,
that great collection of want,
of transient soles-souls.

I miss how we’re piled three stories high,
so close to each others’ mouths that we must
burrow in criss crossed, colliding tunnels
to our point b’s, our job sites,
our lovers’ houses.

maybe it is indeed part of our un-nature to do this,
to cling to one another even
as our unforgiving sungod bakes us whole,
cornish game hens on the el train,
hurdling 40 mph, to and from
our personal hovels, heavens
and bedsheets,
tethered to this place, possibly indentured,
definitely flawed,
where we revel under roofs to prove incredibleness
an virility.

II.

our eyes are not closed today.
they may not blink in unison
as mannequin lids do,
so effortlessly, plastic and mechanical,
but those, we are thankfully not.
for we are flesh,
and air, and miles of gastrointestinal turnpike, if unpinned,
would stretch from here to panama.

we are each of us
a viscous mound called
Sally, Bertram and Queen Mary.

We are the collision of milk flowing, divine,
a whirling dervish
in scalding darjeeling.
we are air,
gliding over enamel into the collective breath
to be devoured so sweetly by others,
as saintly man-scripted gelato,
dribbling down our chins in piazzas.
la dolce ******* vita.

III.

that’s the funny thing about living
in this size 2 world,
the ability to appear anywhere upon its face at a moment’s notice,
to be in front of any face when desired,
to live sans toll booth or customs desk,
to simply dust off our ability to fly
and tumble icarus-adolescent into the collision
between the two blue planes called sea and sky

when a house on the fault line begins to shift, it isn’t really something that can be seen with the naked eye. It only becomes noticeable once the door itself is off its hinge, forced indefinitely into its frame, never to open save for your daily tackles. it becomes playful, and thinks this is how doors must behave.

your house’s bones, the wood frame of your body leans just slightly to the left, throwing off all balance. windows look down instead of forward, eaves appear concerned, a house’s ears hear you mumble softly into night, concerned about trivial things, and how you will honor it.

climb seven deftly and feel as if you were at sea.

now it's my turn. I feel no different. No one else remembers that name but me. I don't know how that makes me feel. It's like objectively, the whole thing never happened, that it was another machination of my own will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my skull is heavy in my head. It solidified into copper some time during the night, and whenever I walk through my days, my head bobs this way and further, and on the sides of streets, people glance for a few seconds before returning to their own thoughts of hardened skulls within their own sloshing head-cavities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'shepherd me a sheep, I, near my god, beyond my hopes, beyond my fears, from death into life,' as i remembered it wrong, bone rattle in a brick alley three years this thursday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~

the division between days, illusory, quietly reclines itself between us, so deep and historic that our eyes see it time immemorial, forgetting that it is itself one continuous day, the breadth of it, this our time, that if left unhindered, it would have extended sloping and tumbling in its eaves and want of stars sailing for a morning. you and i were both there, for we were the nascent point from which all the souls fell from.

my
or your only wish
is to embody every last note
utterance and warble
of the aria

to be unencumbered by body,
mind,
to be only spirit.
to be.

to the furthest reaches
to the softly lit closing scene.

the one you've always dreamt of,
that haunts every bone protruding from your form

and it hasn't even happened yet.
and when it does,
you dance, billy elliot graceful in tube socks frayed
across the living room,
maria callas gone shaking the plaster off the walls,

and you're left,
mouth open
eyes too
right closes,
left too.

how i will come to haunt your home
is bound to surprise even you, buddy.
i will attach myself to every corner,
my hair intertwined with plaster,
slowly forming indelible bonds with the walls of your home.

in time, the walls will become me.
they'll convulse, strong and heavy, if not untested,
loom they will,
in each cold breath that draws steady from the vents

No. 1

the swan song came out of her throat at some velocity. 

too quick for child-ears to hear,
in the room with all the toys, upstairs. 


if only you could hear it though. 

the way we taste it. 


and here, in the basement-corner turned sanctum.

do we let out a pagan ******* roar. 

with Mother Veiled-in-Sepia

and she's got her beautiful thirty-year old baby in arm. 

he's so peaceful. even during his sleep. 
even when his words meander your bible belt. 
moving downward. 
and you take them with water and bourbon as your own. 


still, 
we lie still.
fearing any movement will set off deafening alarms. 

oh WHY CAN'T YOU HEAR THEM?

they're SINGING JUST FOR YOU.
i'll help you when they all leave for home. 

get in their cars.
and travel the turnpike. 


we'll put all the leftovers in tupperware. 

clean the dishes. 

sweep the kitchen floor. 


and hum. the swan song. 

hum it til it becomes late. 

then we'll have to belt it out. 


No. 2**

nothing had made me kneel catholic, 

thin-legged on the pad, 

come three years now.
but those weren't my knees.


that, was before the tornado
 passed the toll booth, 

come into the valley. 


I wonder, if it kneels-catholic. 


That,
was at 1:43, 
and the roadster ambled towards America's waistline, 

to my left was a stark yellow of Mother's halo. 

To my right was the austere, wistful glower
of Daddy gone Thunder.

Out of nowhere, 

the roadster goes upwards.

The waistline shrinks and expands, 

Silent scream, 
and then nothing. 

It's 1:43, 
and the butterflies are awake.

parts of you truly believe  
that your frail structure possesses the gift of flight.

and for the rest of your days,
you will doubt what your eyes see,

every so often believing that you indeed
tried to fly out the 4th story window
and failed.

and everything subsequent is a mere, sublime transfer of energy,
consciousness and je ne sais quoi
into two disembodied hemispheres in a vat.

your earth-eyes, desired,
ground into meal.
spilt, with some smeared upon lover’s forehead,
ash wednesday, thursday, friday i’m in love.

as the Redon painting that left you shivering,
silent and naked once more as in birth.
yeux fermes,
eyes closed
yet they will stare into yours eternally.*

when you were young,
you wanted to be a cartographer
because nothing unto you had been discovered,
and you knew no wrong.

and you were as you are now,
without inhibition,
without the slightest regard for morality,
decolletage or social construct.

this was when you were a native,
without years,
without knowledge
but endowed with divinity’s
slightest, piercing eye.

yes,
you did fly out of that window.
everything that has followed,
the days and years that came,
nieces and nephews’ birthdays at your brother’s house,
the long drives in late afternoon,
your hair, finally white, blowing to the east
at the gray water’s edge as it did when it was jet black.
the valleys and peaks
of one’s life lived,

All happened,
but in your widening
aperture irises
in the three seconds it took
for you to kiss pavement
that for some reason
is as soft as your lover’s lips.

it, the only naturally graceful moment of your life,
comes from the italian defenestre,
meaning “of the window,”
meaning “you,”
dancing in midair,
either your voice
or the air whirling past your body hums that melody
from your favorite twilight zone episode,

did you come wander with me?

Once, before all of this,
it was february and
we were midconversation on a street corner
by the liberty bell,
and your eyes wandered somewhere else,
and i asked what you were thinking,
and you casually asked, 
“what would happen if I grabbed your hand
and we ran onto that bus,
and just rode it wherever it went?”

and then we were us,
with ten fingers,
equal toes, two kidneys
and our souls,
so blessed and tan
from their sojourn
through eternity.

but you may not recognize "me,"
from underneath my burqa, my crinoline,
my mantilla,
my zoot suit or naval uniform.

my hair shorn-sheep-short,
or be it 10-foot-Marie-Antoinette-tall,
there, still, do I lie,

where once we passed, there again I will be,
and with hushed whispers will my lips part,
as they have for generations,
"how have you been? I missed you."

one is in a constant state of reinvention,
molting,
feathers in cascade,
barely hiding ****** and birthmark,
no such garment exists.

one is constantly healing itself.
save for other days,
when direct sun poses no more threat.

eyes fixed to a middle distance,
where one sits shiva,
avoiding the partial gaze of mirrors,
windows through which one may edit,
very slowly, to draw out its best features,
ignoring  revulsion and inequity found throughout.

one lives each day worth half of its potential,
other halves wasted,
excess fruit flesh clinging to rind.

one faces itself,
and sees not oneself,
but the ones that entered, paused in unity, and left,

one should not see exits where there are none.

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.

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.”

up here on the right,
no, no, you can stop here.
I don’t mind walking the extra twenty feet.

I had a nice time,
it was quite the evening,
especially when the moon descended overhead,
staring us both in the eye,
rough lover, sunday morning, and my chin’s all whisker scratched.
is some body you’ll never touch allowed to make you feel that way

centuries earlier,
people staggered their sleep,
dormant for three or four hours,
and around midnight, they’d wake,
swathed, international blue moon lit
while lovers were conquered,
and neighbors addressed as if it were morning,
fresh and jovial, short-lived land angels
connected to their bodies,
to our moon, to floors,
turning in them,
below them,
spatially, elsewhere,
never having left the gap between your forefinger and temple
under duress

what lingers wanted is the smell of grass,
and the bell-ringing laughter that cascades
over steps i’d fallen down minutes before.

and what i want most is for you
to tell me what you see when your eyes shut,
the places you are when our eyes shut to you,
the infinite mass and space quietly tucked away,
beneath your brow,
beneath tendon, vein, and tissue,

tell me the colors of indigenous, endangered flora growing in this world of yours

When I was born,
Mother named me “Novina,”
and I was to be both
the prayer and the answer.
I was to be both god and servant.

When the pebbles started flying,
no one told me to hide,
to cover myself or to wrap
my own arms around my chest,
with my head tucked in so that I resembled
a balled up sacred vessel.

I stood, in the backyard,
with the simple man from next door
who still lived with his mother,
who was still the prayer, but could
never be an answer.
He towered over me,
smiling Mona-Lisa-stupid
in the face of civil war.

When the Jackel-monkey rode in,
on his lowrider chariot, he laughed
and made the simple man dance,
and dance,
and then sleep.
Eyes open,
crying Mother Mary tears as
he fell redwood-heavy before me.

and I whispered “Madre de hijos,”
but that's not a prayer, jackel-monkey said.

And you know prayers? I spit back,
my baby teeth and his flying pebbles
meeting in the middle,
before the pebble flew past the tooth,
to me,
into me,
and into the cinder block behind me.

He rode away on a dark horse,
and I yelled after him, my diamond eyes-turned-dangling pendulums in 2 quarter time,
“judge me and die. Judge me and die. I am Novina whom Mother loves.”

when i was ripe. when i was ripe. under your wing.
thirteen and this jacket's too **** big.
the feathers of your wing tickle my childbearing hips.
is it sin because i like it?
or because i cannot bear child?

only in my mind did i birth one.
we called her a name i can't remember.
she was in my care for a week.
and we watched sitcoms and ate macaroni and cheese in little blue bowls.
i wasn't there when she left.

but my childbearing hips were. 

oh. will you make me a bird too?
will you make me a bird too? 


it kind of makes me sick, in the stomach and ovaries.
when you don't look at me while you fly.
you just look down. at my childbearing hips.
that's all.

i just wanted to know if you got your fingers ***** when you tore your baby out of me.

Her, never having known ‘her,’
the idea,
‘her’
becomes an irregularity for me.

it is not part of my schema. that vantage of man,
as the synthesized post-******.

nevertheless,
her frame rises up stairs,
petaluma sad wink
watch her disappear behind the half wall.

furtive glances into you.
lone, and left wandering.

when we travel along our vectors,
we fail to consider that our bodies are not whole, complete entities,
they are porous, and the closer in,
do we realize that borders of flesh and air,
are indeterminable.

i am silent today like i am everyday.

what do you say, then.
in its stead what shape are your lips?
are they still that red,
the one i could never see replicated on the outside.

my right hand won’t stop shaking,
its fingers reject central authority from their tips.

the sky from down here,
trembles in step.

you know what no one really brings up?
what.
how the flux never wanes,
the seconds evaporate almost instantly,
hitting the pan and running upward,

then minutes, and the rest of them follow.

one learns how to operate legs,
and standard procedures in finger movement.
eventually, the career of inhabiting one’s own body becomes routine,
and not to be described as sublime or miraculous.

futures are foreign and wonderful.
or they’re not,
and your perceptors block all that out,
so you may remain in waking sleep,
trotting down express lanes into life as Mandarins,
officiating in a court so rigid.