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I have gorged on the darkness
of new moon's back-turned rejection then slept. it is not enough to forget everything that I was for the body is a memory too and the earth has registered a year's weight of my steps across the now dried dead grass. instead I will curl into the orbit of my body erase the shriek of my passage forward through ice and nail-sharp wind ease softly into the devouring of my own tail. so it must be every year, an opening to obliteration nothing left to carry forward but the breath a handful of seeds and this small thimble of love. I miss you on holidays not
knowing why and think as I should of the sooty birds who defied migration only to become new species outside the light is damp clouds swim the sky like flexed scars winter has taken away the animals and leaves and as always I wonder if it will ever give them back I miss them with a sadness that keens like the dying of old whales & my usual doubts do not refuse to let me down I wonder if you get weary too of the way time uses our bodies like drunken teenagers use cars I wonder if you've learned to re-arrange your fingerprints I wonder what you think a kiss tastes like if you think it has a flavor like say coconut or lime I wonder if you too have electrocuted your heart with tinsel just to feel alive I wonder when the ladders of the sky will climb down to us and speak in so many tongues the secret humiliation of store-bought wings. you should have taken the piggy back ride
there in the downtown in plain idiotic view but you were sadly too old you said all the lines of your face gone straight the curve beaten right out of them by clocks but what he will remember most strongly how kissing or lovemaking all the circles ran mad through your cheeks like escaped roans who busted their stables to meet the sunrise at the top of the hill. the redness. the way freedom lifts us from the bones of our knees so beautiful the way your face made its escape even with your eyes shut. you wondered for what reason I
have stumbled into your life upturning grocery carts and whispering beautiful forbiddenly I would offer my wrist up so that you could verify my radial pulse yes I am among the sweet sacred of living things listed my heart a running red metronome my blood happily turning laps in this house of me it is enough and more that I have no reason or other was created on the 6th day purposeless contain a personal script genes and collisions which have brought the warm opposable animal of my hand in cusp to your cheek lovely freckled that it adored like water and so isn't it a special magic that I was not written into your footsteps braided into your warp wend but rather fell inopportune like a storm shorn leaf into your hand's hand and now imagine you yourself me myself and this bump-bumping a kind of wind or love delivering us the rare birds that live between Eden and Fate. friend, be so tender on this dark day when the earth is barely
holding fast its smooth round self as little as a slammed door might send it rolling across the tabletop of outer space hold the teacup gently don't rattle the saucer don't drink so fast your tongue catches fire like a stone-struck match people I love have turned into bears on days like this are turning in their angry slumber don't wake them don't feed them proud words talk to them slowly the way you would quiet a locomotive yes if you could quiet a locomotive yes today the earth requires the impossible breaking of this normality of fists and leather skin lover make yourself small be the saint that turned herself into a mouse pulled the thorn from the lion's paw and closed the bloodshot eyes of the jungle no start with your paw your own thorn remake the whole damn thing you are about to become ten seconds from now. |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
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Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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