I was sent to Heaven when I realized
I am not Jesus
and I cannot walk across the ocean for you
—but I can sure as Hell drown

the quiet blue sky
broke under the weight
of a praying palm
my eyes were a glass
tipped over
water running down
the streets,
an erosion
of what was kept
buried beneath

you called me liquid because my language is fluid
i didn't call you fire because between water—there is a winner
and with us there is no loser and also
no champion.
you are oil
so close, so close—
but we will never be the same.

Life is unavoidably ecstatic,
at every scale, degree, level, dimension,
an oscillation,
season to season
day to night to day to night
cycle by cycle
wax by wane
feeling
by feeling
to feeling

always moving
both ways
all ways
always

crest, trough,
cresting-
falling,
lifting-crashing
riding, riding out
and in
and through
and by
and by,
bursting..

I could explode,
I might explode,
I did explode,
I do explode
though I'm contained,
boundary by boundary,
transcending,
including,
moving

always moving
both ways
all ways
always

rainbows weaving spectral waving,
rivers raging, bodies growing,
organismic, oceanic, orgiastic
in-ing, out-ing,
coming-going,
holding, letting go,
flowing, flowing, flows
surrendered, building,
pursing, pleasing,
pangs, paining,
ripping, breaking,
sorrows to joys to shade to shine,
as chasms to substantiation,
as abyssal to full,
as burn to burning,
to smoke etheric,
to ashes, to ground,
all passions
as passions
passion

pumping, filling, releasing
on-ing, off-ing,
alive-dying-birthing-living,
living as moving
always moving,
transforming
breath by breath
by breathing, being
this to that,
a changeling,
changing
always moving

always moving
both ways
all ways
always

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.

The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?

YOU WILL NOT FALL IN LOVE IN A HOSPITAL, YOUR SKIN WILL SMELL LIKE THE DYING AND YOUR LIPS WILL CRACK AND YOU WILL NOT FIND BEAUTY

I USED TO THINK I WOULD FIND SOLACE IN THOSE SANITIZED WHITE HALLS BUT ALL I EVER FOUND WAS MY OWN EMPTY EYES STARING BACK AT ME FROM THE UNBREAKABLE SUICIDE-PROOF MIRROR AND THERE WAS NO COMFORT IN MY BRUISED TENDER FACE

HOSPITALS ARE NO PLACE FOR YOUNG GIRLS WHO HAVE NOT YET TURNED AWAY FROM LIFE AND THEY ARE NO PLACE FOR KISSING YET YOU READ ABOUT MOUTHS FINDING EACHOTHER IN THE DARKEST HOUR AND YOU THINK OF CEMENT HOSPITAL WALLS; THERE IS NO DARKNESS IN HOSPITALS, JUST PURPLE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK SO PALE YOU MIGHT JUST REALIZE THE IMMINENCE OF YOUR OWN DEATH.

YOU WILL NOT FALL IN LOVE IN A HOSPITAL.