花火

(hana-bi)


"Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time."-Borges


I


On a remote mountaintop somewhere in Europe, accessed by an ancient funicula*

removed, a day’s dark filled by the birds' morning bark

an accessed mountaintop, the ach moment, a longlauded ago

he pulls apart the intricacies of his body miniscue 

and expels a beat, 

a rusted funicula tramming the length of his chest

and then truncated, the bite:

"When shall we realize what awaits us?"

What else, if not the cleaver clunk, the enclosed tapping heart

when

the river sorrows the hips of the city, 

and socks fall, abloom.


II


On a remote mountaintop somewhere in the distant world, accessed by  taut, funicular dreams

she detonates into the world hanging bright, 花火,

all phosphorous and luminescence and scent,

beneath the stone and tide and mating where comes 

the rise-up bright from gunpowder and the sky's sizzling,

more than sound or sight, instead of taste

that remarks this clockwork glow--

can you set your own tiktoking  to that reverent fuse-striking and hiss.


To trapeze into the world, the lesson the lesson, the un-lessened.


III


The river sorrows the hips of the city

while the adults unlock themselves from fear and recklessness amid cut grass, discarded cans and accordion of  tar-words and troubles,

the park freeing the bat song, the slapping lag of tongue and waiting,

and the dogs have nothing over the parents in the way their backs scent the ground in circles, cadenced and calibrated.

This cutting away of skin and history,  a tin-can nip, 

ecumenical tuna in water tongued oil, 

labels differentiated in jars of meaning, causality or quiet, jam-stained

the teeth and flora the call,

while the spit speaks of weather 

poked about with meaning, vocabulary and the syntax of garter belt rhyme--

all the world atwitter and counting eyes and cords and font-size hearts.

and there we go

 we all go, flagging and flaking and the sediment carried seaward

our syllables upturning and unvarnished deck of hope.


Have you spent enough time not looking?


etc, etc, and ecetera.


IV


and words scatter across the escaping sky as sleep

that flees the king anight


On a remote mountaintop somewhere in Europe, accessed by an ancient funicula

the river sorrows the hips of the city

we go fleeing, abloom




for: Jess Chandler


°-this line is from Jess Chandler's description of Lucie Elven's novel The Weak Spot