suppose words
are water and our bodies, wells—

flat on our bellies, our unsuspecting laughter supersedes their suddenness.

too late to unsay the space they occupy.
they arrive not with wind galloping
through trees.
they continually commit a nuisance
to us here in this decrepit home,
christening us with depthless sleep.

— what transpires beyond these shadowed moments unlearn the hairbreadth syntax of their perilous measures:

even the morning has no promise of May.
i say that in wide-flung hours of April when leaves begin to smoulder a cluster of red in the brindled breast of foliages, and rushed like lions to a slaughter, paring the flesh from the bone, these words unsheathe us more than the Earth shedding its skin — a dull synonym of how we are pressed against walls, our bones outstretched to breaking, ourselves displaced somewhere where the air of rescue does not wholly kiss us.

there is no image fainter than what was painted. no machinery can outlast the weight that is carried —

persisting lovelessly, a ragged meadow.
clambering ceaselessly, the warmest of bodies recoiled in melee.

suppose words
are such black-red thorns becoming petals and stems merely lovelorn, joyful to the eye
and hands are moons the bedfellows uninvited, you hiding behind shadows
    of changeless flowers:

so much the quiet way of this fate
reduced to hair-trigger.

thighed and pried lilies, dew slips frightened to a mist of trouble;
morning sleighs its brilliant face,
  such a luminous beginning to a dislimned end — far less touchingly than
a lullaby, this hot water music scaldingly
  presses on naked and whispers to them
  a new name without forgetfulness.

the weight is immense — anchored down, full of something in excess. there are doors that wish to commence oblivion, windows yearn to squint at the Earth so timidly muted in the body.

suppose your body is a home and the night subtly the wind that blows,
topples the roof-beam —

may your sleep be still and unshaken,
  your unperturbed garden slouches with a bounty of emerging flowers;
may your windows to the soul
  be always ready for birds that secretly
move in virulent strings of melody,

  something the world sings screaming
of life, something the stone of a fool
  so supple in hearing, something
the heavens hold together with the
  purest hand, something we precisely
    dream, such that we

        suppose you angels
  and us, the witnesses.