i love it so much when you see a looker and walker in the sun and wind
looking straight ahead or slightly down
with eyes sliding up sometimes to see again for the first time the tops of buildings always entered at the lowest runoff point
sliding down sometimes to interrogate turnless stones

this eye wandering distracts and more sharply attunes the looker and walker to the smile
the smile that is trying to kickbox its way onto the proscenium of the eyes, mouth, and probably the hands and the whole body
and to the spark that started all this kickboxing in the first place

It was so much like someone had tossed off a blanket,
the green & blue & inbetween wove all rumpled on the floor/scene here in Atlanta,
It was tossed off like he/she had grown too too cozy,
tossed off like the covered desired for some light-touching air’s fingers,
tossed off & on to the floor/ scene here in Atlanta
& as if we could see the Mercury god/king/planet posing on his golden throne
& when summoned he, Mercury god/king/planet, he will arise
& when his ladder,
& when his clear glass tube
& when his mother’s bony hip are all aligned,
he’ll reach for the middle sphere/ ceiling,
& but until called
& but until nearly smothered
he sits among the blue & green & red & white
woven in the raggedy edges of the inbetween,
& when, reflected, from above
he sees the echoes of ridges & the echoes of hills,
& the shadows of oceans & trees all eclipsed/protected/covered,
he sees the elements rattle in their cages
aiming to mimic his own muffled posture.

How quiet it gets
Just after snow
When at 5am walking out the front door
Onto the lawn
Hearing muffled road noise
Slipping like sand through a sieve
And whispering peripherally
Until sputtering out in indivisible steps
Dimming and fading
Like a cigarette
In a glass of
Water
Flowing slower and slower
Like a river freezing
Locking and waxing
Until woven into outbound threads
And creaking as it settles
Grasping on to tree branches
Yellow glow
Silent 5am scene
With streetlight
How moonlight so easily mingles

Good god son.
Looking straight at feet never got no one no where in this world
Son, can you imagine?
What it’s like to be passed over for shoe leather?
To have eyes, arms, legs, knees, all ignored?
Ignored for an inanimate object with a pleasant scent but nothing more
Salt water and leather.

Or son.
Can you begin to imagine what it’s like to melt?
What it’s like to fold in a too large chair
Staring straight ahead
At a screen
Flashing colors/lights
Sliding into and out of semblances and meanings
Hands searching and
not finding.

And son, your knees jutting out like jetties among the foam
Crossing right over left over left over right
Cool air lifting up hairs like shocks, but god son.
You must look at them.
And son could you ever imagine?
How deep a chair can feel
When you know the folding’s real
And the water isn’t still for any lack of menace
Oh god!
How the screams will peal.

But son, I hope you’ve guessed that from under the refracting and refracted water
That cuts the light up so beautifully
From under that water you’ll never see bottom.

And son, my love, this is vital
What they say about screams in space is true.

I know you’re a child, kid, but think, really think on this one,
How’s it got to taste?
Fed nothing
But expecting much
Can you conceive of the empty imperial dry rot
Upon which, believe this if anything, the sun never sets
And child, it tastes like carrion.
When the chair starts its own folding in.
Holy Lord in Heaven, my beloved son, when the sea foam green monoliths roll in with the moon.
They **** against the wood legs of the jetty
The feet, and knees too,
Those that are foundationed in the sand and bound up with the shoe leather
That you,
My ingrate son,
Cannot seem to ignore