I touch death
everywhere. It is
pleasant sometimes. It is shooting
upright stone forever
up. It is
cold metal blue, wind moving rushes,
holding on to a snag as smooth as couch
chamois. It is
feeling wooden table bones, random spontaneous
tapestries, my skin, your skin,
my clothes wet with substance,
drawn through mass downwards, on to
you.
I would let them go through me, if I
could, like smoke, like
talk, I feel
(deaf, mute) the smoke inside from
the drug inside. It would be outlawed
if they could
reach inside,
visible words of hair-lit thinness
on what is sought, reflections appearing on
the beyond side of ordinary surfaces,
tasting like
salmon. I saw the glinting
salmon meaning in a poem, Jorie. It was
like when the sun came out with her,
predictably, and I thought to trust it,
perhaps this once, for hurt can’t last
without the good also
lasting. Maybe I
just wasn’t listening right, this potential
human being, this possibility, this normal
occurrence, mundane, talked and
scribbled dismissively as a dejected
thought of dejection about dejection about
what it is
all about. Write it down,
it’s a crossword, long as the climbing
steps around the earth, senseless as
black.
white.

There could be much in nothing, but it’s
everywhere outside, and there are just a few
stars, really. The billions are
few
in the outward sinking sky.

See, I touch death, colorlessness,
everything, sitting on
ledges, feet dangling, today as yesterday
as tomorrow, trying to stop this thinking
habit, trying to be a Buddha about it, but the
wind is
cold
this time, and there are too many of you.
Maybe next time something will appear here,
in soaking colors and ever
pulsing acceptance, understanding

blood, moving,
living, meaning

from beyond here, tomorrow or yesterday,
but I hope today, before I am touched
by it, and realize

nothing.