how when I have arrived at a distant place |
sleep beheads an animal when dreaming

           is in search for its body somewhere
        and lies over barbed coverts – I am that
        animal  again in, over and over, lost within

its hubris a dream forecasts with separate proof
near the end of this investigation.

what will they tell me when they see me
after all these years when it rained almost
every day? of what continued trace must I bear,
and may not be mistrusted yet? what evidence

is inflated, with nothing to report?
this long stumbling night
contorts its own version                 of being lost and again in,
                                      the same covetous body snared.

how   when   a selfishness manifests   itself   in complete   peace
    is when a dream, a piecemeal apparatus

you can feel even the resting tremor of it learn my structure
and are these now infinitely throbbing highlights  a  part

of  me  starting  small  convulsions   anywhere it goes

Beneath   an expression

a       found     crevasse   that   was

    for your   body



Dear  ___,
   if by principle      you are to believe
                        the brevity of a word
   then should it be that

    there is much terror applied by your mind
    when this is being the reddest herring you can
   imagine strange and leading the body to
   traverse a line and get lost midway





and over it
    a    purpose    for    its   depth
  that is      for    my    body

1.
I am optimistic enough this day clings to the highest mast,
is now born out of prophecy.
                           I pass by the old mirror: see myself: blear myself:
is blot to canvas, slit from the wrist of this home:
   I witness how it is to sustain beatings.

2.
In the empty lot, age 9, we wrung frangipanis and ruined
   the pedicle somehow a map of a history where this ground
  shook that was once an old cathedral. We blew

               bubbles out in the haziest of days, pallid and droopy
    the clouds identify in their short collisions – the stream that was
   the sky
       the  face of  my mother when found news of my would-be death
    1996, Kawasaki my mother's clutch on the soiled linen
                 beginning an autopsy

3.
I conjure a frayed upon image of death in its colloquial.
       a fractal of mistakes taken as righting out. I sense prognostication
when potential for a satisfied framed encounter or out of luck that was
       a night making all of this less than total.

I     remember the discoloration of the many lights – the sky beginning an
  erratum: this could have been your last – what is exacted here
        like a tarot, the culprit a newfangled man in the rearview mirror.

4.
How can I forget you – all of you? You wear light like karsunsilyo.
You are all flowers I arrive at a contusion of gardens.
  Rinse me with light – abandon me after.

5.
  Made air staler. Dew my maiden when lit
  from the matutinal – in tow, a bedraggled kite soaring in the heat
  one distinct summer,
      wish it pure that was I, almost touching the vermillion,
my faintest image of freedom was a bird trapped in between
   the venetian.

6.
  In a dream, I am pursued by a train in an alley – in the next scene,
I am being forced to take a plunge
       into a chasm: the fall did not scare me – but my acquiescence
made me flinch: standing before space, anesthetizing
       the skin so it made me more than metal, the clangor

   suggests a tragedy. Awakened by violent nudges
from       my mother: it was the New Year. Pyrotechnics paint the sky
over and over an ephemera in the bleak behemoth of this:
       a makeshift home ruined by untranslatable music

the sound of rain at 11 in the afternoon and a nearby funeral.

To reach for the longest day was to drive next to
dithering the light of: is telling of a certain person
whose features memorized for performance in this
weather, this the climate again for some reason as if

would spin away – you for example, whom to me
meant half a tongue tied to some distinct secret
I cannot word it so for your own sake – in most days

I curse your fate done to me in another’s; to be touched
not by your reluctance to speak, but you in your plaintive
that was my domain you took from me – hesitant to tangle

or untangle the lapped-up shore that was our natal home
you take photographs of serious with its violent gasp, the
blue its own agenda – built from the lines of this hurried
translation: shape one's work now I have no use for you.

to reach for the longest day was to give rise to reason
a want that must be tried, must be let loose, sent back
to you that is its origin followed each day until you lost

your will to shape and start the end that could not be
that was nothing of your kind to be brought to acceptance:
as if fists clench to outsilence you whose face turned to clay
the next minute I held nothing more and wanted nothing out of,

almost prompted by saying who it was
I have no use for but I, freshly turned into you –

That was when          my body reached for, sensed its limit
then drowned    in careful trivia             of   you   who always sat

next to      him    in   your    denim jacket       |      just  before


this     is   a   poem    or   an   admission    of:

I now


understand


the           common     day

               shelved and      collected,    is  like   furniture,      organized


to      pattern    your       life    I   have     no    place      in



months    of    this    order
still     never    reaching    for.

I celebrate my burning you into. Celebrate this body, take it across the river. Today is unremarkable

because I now understand the common day – the finding, the threatened property of where



I once stood gazing stone-heavy     against   your   pavement   that   was    touch



a single    handful   of  your   meaning  was       it    lilted       and  is     now    delighted


surrendering in    the dizzying    way   home





shapes     one’s    work      now     I   have    no   use   for      you


when    occurred     one   day        it    whispered


a    world                opened   before     and    I          dug


for   what      was      your          body :                 lifeless      |     clinging    to

        return  
                               your   extant           river       now         *nostalgia

says the neon sign gleamed,
refracted on your face
that sullen evening – I do not have

many nights to remember. If from a high
place I imagine you flailing,

what would call you back? What for?
You, coming toward the light – the subservience
of the next face

chauffeurs us. Unfazed, will me to pretend,
if not, then carry on the next meeting.
I will whisper to myself: this is how I sustain beatings

You have no use for poems.
Neither do I. You, dressed in your best,
I, submission refined by sartorial. Notice how my hand
continues to displace geographies. The thinning
  horizon of a candle, almost a faultline.

Slumped on your back as if comfort were a burden
to say: keep this time together with its fever. These often times
the last moments seal them shut out of histories.
When we came into,

I had a falling out – there is a straight line we could
run into and this instance might enervate

into a single drop of honey into your mouth. I await that
prophecy like it was the final thing before I resign
to incompleteness.   Delicate essence

the    neon sign says, glaring through the
  glib downpour outside. You laughed at our
unpreparedness, but the readiness that was obligation when
  separate had no omen of rain.

I am watching myself again. Everything was slanted
by rain as the living err me. Even when together,

       feels like emancipation. Going disparate places.
Outside it continues to rain. You asked if this rain washed
   this city whole and gave it a new name, would I still remember.

It is June from time since then, the skies still attentive.
I will not come out until it rains.