I could and would want,
if what is behind me is truly nothing,
if these words stop lying and untangle me,
to fall backward, away from
this circle of attempt.

But then (God) how deep I would fall!
without meaning, inside coiling time.
So again I find myself having to try,
writing helplessly
another repetition.  

Just the act is enough (for a while, uncoiled).
But it’s not enough. What can I do?
My written bursts are always
muted in some kind of murk
or otherwise obscuring clarity,
and they press their beautifully soiled hands
against concrete windows,
knowing they will (and must) stay
for another while, at least,
tearfully inside.

The beginning of it is a slow
burdensome churn to widen cracks.
The rest is a ritual for the politely deranged:
******* what little air seeps out of the real,
chafing what little skin I have
(all of which is a little fearful)
with what few rays of medicine light
are handed to me across the cracks
from the real.

It is a ritual (in essence)
to unstifle the strayed confusion I impart
to the in-between two childs,
who blurry, alone, and accepting, fly together
in the midst of this ever-widening green field.

“We should go back to our home
on top of an overturned dust bin,
where I can toss sand in the air and laugh
because I don’t care to know beyond,”
I hear her say to the other.

I imagine my love as this child,
make the hidden screen in front of her past
young eyes coalesce gently
into this hidden now-and-everything.

I see you collect rocks safely
into your pink-striped shirt
as dirt stains your purple pants.
The color of your young hair is the same
it was when I saw it reflected in the
Tyrrhenian, before we reached our ripped end
and you made me fall backward,
somersaulting with eyes closed in sickness
toward the sun we saw that day,
in the garden we agreed was perfect.