Air left to
rust when we speak

it now is the time
to postpone

gladly over a shining,
retaliatory absence

in search of a space
to shape a volatile figure

that was
a bridge

how, humming our steps
a valedictory

making staccato.
hurry before it catches

us mid-flow, profuse
with sustained harbors

but they cannot
see us here when they slit

us from our canvas, how?
all that radiates

expels us out of this
when no more; absorbed their

breaths boldly stuck inside
a body: a cage: a meeting: an encounter

a path dollies in perfect capture
frame by frame almost an ellipsis

the world tonight blackened
a gutter squalled by an unseen figure

darting across,  eviscerating
the bargain: that in-between produced vastness.

1996

When news of his would-be death arrived,
his body sterile in white cloth,
serene his was, his finest stupor – clinging on to a drip
  of life, his tongue a strawberry his mother recounted,

forcing him into, his senses dulled,
  it was 1996: else there was understanding,
  there was a hand in a hand that is a latticed rose
  of beauty – or unbeauty, the high prayer of it,

they sat in front of the room facing a mute wall
  for days weeping or laughing. The rustling of the
  daily paper broke silence not news – his dearth was sure.

no more almost was when he went sharply
in a field of grass, his shredded amusement
received by an unfolding – it was his years sideswiping
  him later on, his indices of age revealing an undulant postscript

to which there were imaginary sky-portfolios and
  a particular representation of a smoothened end of a smoking gun
  he held now, years after, years later on

a portion of it his mouth pressed on a lover’s,
and a footnote hidden
    deep within his pelvis:     come back here when laden

Impugn* shall if not your eyes are meager coruscations. Self-refuting, explanatory of its given berth.
              This is the unsolicited onus of addressing it: heart rears static splayed, intercepted by
                                    this question.

Stigmatize this if performance of, merely a concert. There is rigor stiffening the veins when ensanguined
                   from much gnawing of the uncontrolled sharpness of impressions. I think of ways to mend,
                           and when unable, means to bend.

Settle this once and for all and here is how. If perhaps an admission of something, let me see clearer
                      than this makeshift fog. Pave me a railroad somewhere, or house a station.
                        All of this waiting, all of this silence chastising what noise needs to be freed.

Pretend to be carrying a statue. Curse in a different language. Show what it means to be wronged
                           when the incompleteness of evidence merits a conjecture – this is your punishment,
                        to see me in false light and dislimn our quite fate:

                     it will be long  before there is the clearest answer, the apparatus to straighten,
                         to muffle the sound, and put light into this beating.

to Dani*

remember when, you do not:
you are a ground slicing the center of
    this home.

the long divide the furniture endures.
in front of the colossal tv
bodies spilled like water.
20 minutes was all it took – your name alone,
a potent hygroscopy.

when close enough:
dissipate. You took all the green the foliage could,
    soldered to your body a forest it manifests.

   repeated, if not a newer foundling:

    the   space   you  take  for  acquisition ,
    the faultless tenancy   you   mistake   as  counsel.

every saved for, and gleaming space
   aspires for venue – translates to an arena for snapshot.

[some mundane depiction ascribes for you to be known]
years later my portrait still hangs perpetually
on a modern furniture from a contemporary skillset.
  take this declaration.

years later, leapt to this day and forward:
the surgery of galvanized steel is reminiscent of a departure.
the tedious laborer smiling through bonsai pots
  carrying out lobotomies. The afternoon more sterile than
   your    face  as if operation.  This town knows you by practice
  
  and habit: all of it sepia, if not leaden.

It is June. Plaridel is in sepia, or leaden – whichever,
  this is the leitmotif.

Soon clouds with jettison a plodding swathe of
  water. You will wear the petrichor,

While a ramshackle of a passing tricycle
  whelms a throbbing orchestra of junk.

Here is the hearth that rears no fire:
   a mother, children in tow – a troika,
   on a cart not even close to ease of
   a hurtling thing.     Trees naked in vulnerable
   green – the verdigris carried by a
   miniscule Maya.

Here comes again, the neighbor peering through
   the nuisance, is alarmed, eyes like a fugitive,
   curses my mother – I grab the nearest, sharpest
   object available that was my own hand.

Ingrained deep within, a root – or a stone, among many
  other stones in me, this salt-well, a savingslight of turning wave
   that is almost an approximate oceanview in me.

Gnarled over the longest time. In here we soothe by
    gin, passing out in front of our gated homes,
    singing whatever was available, close to our pitch.

Somewhere, Windsor has lost the poem / critiqued by
  a mirror fecundating a smeared image, a blot.
   A Rorschach was it, or just a day dazed they did.
Somewhere, this is scattered. Uncollected. To make remnants
  of as evidence, not to investigate if true.

The 6th body of this is what I am speaking of in glossolalia.
   A requiem leaves it stark and cold in this consummate weather.

Another piercing salvage of metal cuts the humdrum town
and unlike the sturdy mango tree, this is a collective of secret
  encrypted lasting more than a life.

It is June. Plaridel has ripened from the expired summer.
   Perchance the exquisite promise is sweet, holding all the bitterness together,
    ready to fall, at last.

Picture me this: not the arched brow
  but the body when night, curves like a moon
  accruing more weight.

Develop me this: not the body when curved like a moon
    but the white stucco of it,
    assuming its form.

Fold me like this: not the white stucco of it,
   but the space it takes for need,
   the occupancy it wastes for want.
     In this manner is how you will

And lay me flat against the river:
   not your memory of walls with fleur-de-lis,
   but with lilies. If this day were leaf when turned
   from the night when I took this collapse,
        let your hands be pedicle. My inflorescence you have
   mistaken as displacement yet not drown – meet this canopy

  at the end of this river that is your river – your static grace that
  is the music of your passing.

When met, disintegrate: not the lilies – they are anchors you have forgotten,
     not this day if it were a leaf, but the day dried from a washline
   of clouds. Let my inflorescence be a blunder of your recall.
         When you meet this canopy, pack all of its mileage,
               exact it in this distance. Take photographs of. Do not keep.

This is today’s calm headline: when the clout of a hammer
sings a would-be house the same way a dog’s howl fractures
an all-too-sudden image of a stranger. All of this having
to do with your body, that is when trying to insinuate a day

like a beast cautious behind a brushfire. Take your hand
and cross your body – paint a gesture, with your timid signatures

   a showcase of a blind transaction for something and take it
to the nearby cathedral. Fasten you would, a murmur veiled
and hidden in one of the pews and kowtow / this is your

   finest headline today / before them, make do your obeisance
   to / to fall like a downed tree after a surge / drift on a river /
             / repeats as if you do not forget /