to curl up,
to go brown and crisp with drying edges,
hearing the ears, the ears hissing of space.
sitting,
falling, bone on bone resting into their couplings, their pile, their doll form.
hanging, by threads and rubber, my guts, my heart, gurgling with eyes wide, pressed to the floor.
sinking, into the chair, compressing, my flesh kneaded, an ***** of folded clothes, seamless fabric edges.
fading eyesight, in my thoughts which are empty as parked cars,
leaning halfway over the shadowy cool ponds of the evening,
smelling wet, heavy, musky, bouquet, night air,
a watching forest.
alone, free and forsaken, light as dandelion seed,
scratching at my dreams with shrieks of protest, we sail.
icy stems snapping, autumn to winter, charcoal liver.
waiting peacefully amongst the tiniest renters,
the other crawlers of the quiet house.
idle unit. murmuring water cooler.
The plane of death is cool grey slate. Well dressed, impassable, implacable.
This is the valley that sinks, wet warm and green,
humming, buzzing and ******.
wary and jutting, retracting before his spit touches the water,
playing with his mucus, a boy soon to meet his father.
His father cried, like jesus, with eyes rolled back like a shark,
in the hospital paliative care unit, unshaven, deflating.
Sylvia Plath's inky fingers,
hushing my lips, keeping the secret, where there is no secret.
trade the moon for a penny, because the penny is real.
implacable is his love for the park, his spring over the stream,
over the cracks in the pavement, where the weeds grow,
in beautiful greens, with the sound of crickets,
playing their combs.



cbrander