Mamihlapinatapai, blues
“in the midst of my,
to you, Shadow, burdensome,
Speech.”—Paul Celan
No. 1
Imagine if
music sang as a masquerade
a September night rang at November’s door, intemperate in degree and measure
the voice-spun sky was a finger poked glance in the passenger window of a darting taxi
and in the dark, you turned a corner and fell,
as time broke out into a fight in the subway like two elk colliding chest to feverish chest
the world of words, the well-dressed cadences
the dispassionate spit, the fetal clamor in expensive suits
the studded straps of night and the rapping trees, nightly gone,
all of it, gone.
Imagine if
the blue lit apartment light in the corner suit was an extra set of eyes
the car lights weaving up the long boulevard outpaced the old man’s newly polished set of teeth
the wind an extra set of arms,
your voice filled by the body gone missing in the lake
another’s voice filled by the meandering return
this too imagine, gone.
Beneath the wing of the clipped church balustrade, you pointed toward a verse of light and remained mute but bewildered.
No.2
Do you remember,
his voice filled by the backbite of your body beckoning,
beloved tales steep upon a return,
the chronic fever of the land she carried between her teeth
the tributaries lit on the snow hill, falling
the sky uncloaked and split,
two boys stumbling over one another on a verdant hill
an owl galloped over them in wing upon the clawed upon sky
there you were, both, grasping
and how have you, since, calendared the unlocking of your days?
that for a moment caught fire in your disappearing.
Do you remember,
November’s vexatious sky, croquis et agaceries
the ongoing longingness of things, the lift and the leverage of love, born nodding
the knotting of wrists and the notes snug, lacrimal along leonine scars, breathing.
Do you remember,
the sharp chord of your amalgamation
the sentence that rivers as long as the curve of your index finger
stretching in the morning toward the green clover tongued by a fox and fog,
she once held breathing,
the match struck against the pane upon
the shadow eluded and the name
do you remember the why sky and white gourd, gone.
Beneath the wing of the clipped church balustrade, you pointed toward a verse of light, going
No. 3
Imagine then contamination
light flushed upon skin as water pink'd upon the bone of paper
nick of time and spine of weather, stained,
the alphabet’s ligament and line
all that once left to vanish
the hunger and contained
a palimpsest upon which an arrangement of bound-buckets remain
bricks and mortar, the order we uttered gone.
Beneath the wing of the clipped black
No. 4
Do you remember
the world’s lubricious leveling, when the sky revoked colors,
when the sky was blushing and you reached into the cold stream
your skin alphabetized stones as nations
the weather thrushed the as you lay on the embankment’s table
the shield of your crackling body upon the grass
a divestment, benighted and the day tugged upon your soften'd self,
pithy as memorizing lips,
concomitant and coiled.
Do you remember
who twined from your ribs, your heart the spinning architecture’s eventide,
the day wrapped neatly with ligature and spun
the seasons curled up in the back of your throat
the tooth-gap space counting a mouthful of ok's slipped through
the space parsing them from you,
the music and lights wintering, the bones orchestrating
the world’s cantor and hearts go running as leaves scratching in the ditch,
ghost stories from the songs once lived
the only voice in your body was the spin and hum of the world
phantoms and a graveyard’s story spilling out the whiskey glass let dropped on the stones
and in the end
you lived in winter full-bellied and wobbled
spacing hope toward home
Imagine if beneath the wing of the clipped church balustrade, you cuddled
No. 5
Imagine if
it is autumn and there the separating and tugging and it is autumn and it is each of us and it is we of flight,
it is autumn and there, gone and tagging, do you remember?
Imagine if beneath the wing, nothing not even air
No. 6
Imagine if
the throat of a wolf, long ago wintered from the wind, the color of lost bodies
the color of your eyes wading far into the sea, shore break and loss,
your children in the dark recesses of the bramble and cave, light spiders in and the moon threads a silver'd path,
your limbs carve constellations into the chest of the sky and there you are both waking,
do you remember, this?
Do you remember
the mantis shell left as a transparent shirt on the green branch,
the white paper stronger than the predation of life, the devotional singing of the Shadow,
the space between the pulled bark parsing me from you
when once we lay in the quiet night reciting snow upon our lips and all you spoke was gone
my head and heart from the moiety and circumference, Copernicus and you, bewildered
our notes and 88 heart keys, gone.
Do you remember we were of flight in ivory and ebony spruce.
No. 7: Coda
along the sea, trees taught flower to stone
the land born fecund with opossum and beetle bone
the heart left behind the cicada’s shell into the side of a tree, a thumbprint of time
and the tempo rescued from the lumber, sand and swamp
loss lead us home to our watery self, together and at last alone.
