The fatter rains are beneath the canopy, but deafened
Come the flowers whom I’d sing mournful songs,
Our latter-day hymns of Benjamin Gibberd
So, I say to them all as they to the earth, twinges of falsehood
In loved embraces to the earth they bind themselves
(But the quiet soothes of incurable ills).
Their voices become intolerable candors of intolerable people
That echo between the ash and locust who seem to melt darker.

This empty way comes in sudden inspiration, a heart
Ready to fill with blood again, to beat love and passion
Into nature’s core and I stand in its middle, crushed
By endless gallons of living things; but, I need not surprise
Or overwork myself since the airs taken for granted
That I put on or breath, settle in my lungs
Pressing heavy with every love that could have been
Or every natal anxiety come to plume.

As flies, I am not ready to make vines spring or reek up the woods
And my feet take the flight, take the prayer—I’ve only ever
Prayed to myself, anyway—this tilled earth of my hand,
What will come of me someday, grows out moss
In fibres of a self-conceit remaining in sorrow and censure
Youth and in pleasure, run until my foot gives way in the mud.

I lay sinking at the rude audience of tongues and tangles
And the open world, far too distant to really hear the speeches
They’ve heard far too many times. Perhaps I’ve saddened them
They do not respond to the resigned gurgle of the mud
But, there are tears in the woods, too marked up like pistils
Of much-quitted innocence given no reason to act
No comfort are they, nor am I to them
The only true comfort now, is the weight of the world
And the wind on my back.

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings.”

The smell of fresh grasses lefts stifled underfoot,
A thousand tiny voices, wheaten, bug, or no,
Can call up to the elderly trees, whose white palms
Gave surrender only moments ago to this wandering eye.
To think, I am but that hole of many in a chain
Of lattices made only by their breakage,
For I relinquish myself to the spirit or biology
Two gods my life’s work has been to destroy.

The sun comes through that shattered mat of life
A fallen crest, defining the morose bedding of
Victim and trap, so that I may hear it speaking;
Strung up and dragging on its gaunt, breathless rot
It claims a stupid animal lived in this body once,
Relinquished itself by flight to the unwavering, silky
Thread of beautiful frailness, or motionless spectra,
Thus, it deserves to lose what it did not want
Since it did not flee life, it did not flee death.

I wanted to study it more, enchanted by the hollowness
Until water came onto my brow, fell onto my passive lips
Uttering, till then, a prayer to fly from here,
Till my eyes color over and I’ve finally escaped.
But, this motif, I see, is overplayed, too trite
For secular gods who prefer the wiles of game
We, the peak of human life, I the most sufferable of them
I, the most thirsting of my image, tend to consume.
If it were boredom, then plagues would sweep hot winds
Everywhere; thus, it is not, it is the constant reminder,
We are but nothing, but flesh to die, unwitting flies
To the spider’s web.

I may tend to the soil.

At 21, growing flowers with my cries for help
Feels criminal, ridiculous. Those ******* children,
On their mute petals flourish jealously
In more lush and verbal company,
But their speak fades out as color and as light
The last of the sounds is celebration and surprise.

Of course, I am tied to this soil, watching waves
And waves of new life rise in clouds of pollen,
Migrating and impatient; New things seem to form,
Divisions where there is only space barring austere tongues
Their desired juices, but I command Myself, abstain,
And keep the teeth and silence like fences
Made of mockery, ridicule, and other forms of self-control.

And yet, the time of false gods effervesces in a comforting dream
When I feign sleep, vines creeping up while I regret their invitation
Standing amongst them, beautifully crafted shapes, lacking color.
I admonish quietly, I suggest furtively, I command passively
And amongst plenty of others, I am one open eye, a slit for lamentations
And they are the doomed recanters of permanence, forever happy
Forever in death, there is no time to wither.

Everybody sits in quiet contemplation
Breathing like they want no one else there
If they were a thousand tiny films
Their songs are syncopations.

Long before the scene fades out
You left the cinema, you gave no credit
To roll, nor any role to set it as you said
With that unironic smile,
It wouldn’t matter if you were dead.

You said, you’d rather be unkind
Than to say what’s on your mind
Sizing up the mountain in the room
With that cord wound up
And that knife in your mouth
I know I said I wouldn’t call you out

On it, but you’re a thief
So don’t steal, I can see it in your eyes
You’re a pro
At moving right between lines.

So where was I in your big production?
Just the money shot in all seduction?
Thumbs down and out moving out
We’re all our worst critic, but don’t walk out on the show
I’m unconvinced; this is first of many episodes

Take a good hard look at the million frames
Think of all the things you cast in my name
But in the dream of mine, timeless in birth
It would break your heart like up there in the scene
If you could bear to see it up on screen:
The script isn’t how it was meant to be.

Because he dove feet-first in a dustdevil
The ground beneath him began to give way
Those bigger whirlwinds made their presence known
As names in plastic bags and things cast off, away
Slipped out and through his palms, his own
Voice escaped his teeth, said it would hurt coming down.

She envied the bird who struggled in the wind
And turned herself into a whisp of smoke,
That spun vortical inside his lungs
Somehow, he felt overwhelmed and her
Breath shaped the clay soul they shared;
Something to be hurt, something to be spared.

Not to break apart, they took up their arms
And their peace, and their dream of circles
Over nothing felt complete, so they
Could ask if they would dance or whenever
They would fall but this moment was helpless
To answer, if there was one at all.

A pick-up case sits in the dirt, a face like muddy children, hence,
All it needs is a pick-me-up; I’m sure you’ve been around and out

Have a cup of coffee and tell me of the times, mutter out and dispense
Of those all miseries; there’s another watching clouds break about

And solitude unmake itself. But I leave it with twigs, quiet and devout
Because this old-soul dispels of clarity without youth or commonsense.

Even if I could, neither of us could say what rises Easter morning
Or to what sun gods, of praise, are most deserving. But, just this one time

Dewy sunlight parched the bold-faced shadows came without much warning,
On warm breezes at our necks was something akin a wish of mine.

We know not where we are and we do not wish to leave behind
This time to count our blessings in the contrails in the sky

For the shoring up of bleak tomorrows can’t demystify a trance
We glimpse and fall to wobbly knees might stay on the off chance.

These things belong on a shelf
Like a bottle of tears that looks like a stuffed animal
And a pillow case that became a great transport of rage,
Amidst the dust and clutter
Runs my subconscious animal seeking blood, meat,
Retribution and the slightest gain
Through the wires of the human body
Cut and casually rearranged.

These things are purposed
As notches in a Grecian urn
Cold reminders of a worthwhile mistake
Taken astride and antiqued
For me, for you, betokened at my expense
Because I need to eat, occasionally oddly,
And when the stomach can’t trust the hands
Your clothing stays close to your body.

These things are like dresses on a library,
Dressing the dirt underneath
As life preservers full of water, full of wine
But these are situational traumas
And never lacking their angel wings
Defective and cuckolding self-esteems next to me
Hold hands at the bottom of the ebb and flow
Of human misery or ecstasy,

Just maybe it’ll hurt too much this time,
As revenge for my laughing at its brothers.