A Defense of Sorrow
“It will take no forms but twisted forms.”-- Louise Glück
netted in a clothed mouth
voices bark up light and stitch darkness in the ward
opening spidery cracks, the pauses between words
damp in the trees and along the tunnels of patients’ throats
syllables stick fire into recipes left long in the oven
no longer vocabularic or the dramatic weightlifting
nor the felonious feeling of adjectives, only counting under one
recall the misremembering which paddled riverward in the boondocks
the goings and the touch behind the eye, the book of you
a defense of sorrow spoken in unbuckled forms by a campfire gone damp
the wire caught in a storm drain, twisted tea stains on back pages of books
the blanket's dandruff on the collar, words shaped in the night
that moment when you learned to fall asleep no longer brought on by hunger
or tears sometimes, syllable scratches on an heirloom table
a bark in the night is still just a bark in the night
sharks on the beach, just sharks on the beach
were our metaphors just wrong, fanciful flight
our maps mourning without illnesses
dossed down under the stars and the highway racket
your heart an open swag as the red earth baked
and sunset called it a day while frisky verbs and intemperate itches evaporate
nothing lasts not even the sequoias and a heart appears in a window
the moon cold and hung on a black wall on a thin green thread, a comet
then
the morning light, a short email, a WhatsApp text and death in a room
just like that
the ceiling fan gravitational, the helicopter heartstrings
a diary written in braille in the dirt morning’s memory cannot illuminate
you became just breath and black paper fell like ill teeth from your mouth
sailors lost in the snow, the constant worry of limbs housed in the ice
yet the crows still swim the rivers, up the coast the red embankment hides
a tool to call home, a book of misspelled love is still one’s own
thin as an eyelash asleep on the pillow on the hill, songs on the couch
damp pedals recede and drop at the feet of those who have gone
once under the black mouth of a dosshouse’s front porch, the crawlspace collapsed
as you scattered and hid-hid like a raccoon
from ward to wall to word to world, the San Gabriels watched
as you hung upside down, your toes Ursa Major over the slopes of Big Bear Lake
funerals on the beaches eulogized over Zoom tears
forms come and go and the times darken slow
the amber light of the fishing boats, lightning bugs from above
flittering off the shoulder of Taiwan, the stomachs of the waiting growl in their sleep
death’s shade pulls down that old harpy in the corner, the sun
a mouth spits out words uncleaned, the bewildering dentistry of loss
from ward to wall to word to world, you reckon with the wreck
of your rung wrong words with your toes in the sand, language tied
and cuticles cut and dropped in a tin for the mice
grief grows green in the backyards throughout the land
Dear remembered, all life long only questions
and the end, the end of a poem, for now
let us think
