this is modern day
squeezed from my
conception of
breakfast
eaten without
utensils.
and utensils are
simply
sloppy instruments
baked
into my hands to
discourage
dressing myself in
the morning.
hobgoblins are old
crematories
lit wonderfully
only at death
so that knocking
is a charade
only spirits
perform and only
when i am awake.
i wanted a story
of jinglebell winter
where there are
knives i could thrash together;
feathers to pluck
from peeling walls;
and the knives
would sharpen, also,
turning winter
into spring.
there is a new web
on the spigot
in the basement;
coloured by the
spray of dust that
won’t stick
anywhere else.
there is
a kettle on the
concrete floor
that used to be
the foundation.
a leaky wall has
filled the kettle
with rust and the
foundation
has cracks as
delicate as
sutures of the
skull:
evolution occurs
by the minute.
i won’t be
foraging tonight
for crusts or
invitations.
eating has become
as formulaic
as geometry and
the stones in my gizzard
have crumpled to
sand. the sand
is simply an ocean
that’s stopped moving
and my stomach no
longer laughs at the
clowns and kings
and little girls in the scenery.
i thought i could
swim.
i thought walking
was an insurrection against ancestors.
that sorghum i eat
is merely a brutal fragrance of squirrel meat
and i would rather
close my throat with glacial allergies
than eat anything
out of your hands.
she walks through
the turnstiles of a
mountain in glabrous charm.
pine trees scissor
in half as if
sawed or
felled after
seeing
blood. i will find
cemeteries quicker
than smelling
fog
as
she balances on an ebb tide
that is never coming back.
her grunts are
heavier
than
an
avalanche – putting one foot down
and
lifting another is
difficult work. she
has
borrowed
breaths like boats
capsized
and
re-
floated. i’m
humming for fisheries
to
explode,
and
maybe, a galaxy to
levitate
past me. she
doesn’t
believe that time
inoculates
or
fossilizes. i can
only think she
has never
blistered in the sun.
so we signal each
other
with pinafores dipped in
prismatic eyes; lidless cataracts
crying gravel.
eventually she’ll
fall stringless cradling
carnivorous plants;
anticipating a
drenching bubble
that
doesn’t
pop.
the air will
fracture in
a
long
scream without
honey
or flies to
cushion it.
she’ll wait at the
bottom of a
cambrian lake.
protein alley
i
can promise you one
amino
acid
staggering
in an alphabet soup
and
hiding like a spy.
the
sure colour of a painted car
is not as
permanent. the
crust
of an adolescent
love
melts
like a broken egg. and
the smallest part
of
a
thought that bridges a synapse is
galloping
without
blinders in the
frost of an
abandoned
drive-in; in moss
bloated
with
water; with silicon of
a.i. simply
waiting
to
rust.
i can assure you
neurons
are made to last
a
lifetime
and however
long
that is depends
on
your
bones;
depends on living longer than you should.
and
although sanskrit is swahili is spanish which is swedish,
bottlenose dolphins
swim
in any language and still breathe without gills.
i
will leave shells on the beach
for
you, i promise: little
tumours of
salt
and
water sticking like nose-
rings
through
eons of flesh. and
when
concrete
dyes its hair,
shedding
acne and unsung hormones, suns in the city can
pool
their
small fragrances into fidgeting
backwaters of usable meat.
a classroom without supper
I.
the red prison of my eyes
is
bleeding wolf tears
that won’t
chase
prey but,
they
are only
termite mounds
with gritty throats
and
i wouldn’t chew
wood;
i wouldn’t age within
the bark
of a tree;
i would
seldom grip the horns of a
symphony if
i could lay
a placenta
on my scalp
and rinse the background noise
with snake venom which
is only a
small
genetic
mistake stolen from
scorpions.
II.
there was a night once
when
i
excused the embankment
that
fills around me
like
a
cage. there was
a
bridge of time that limped
across a frozen fjord
and didn’t
slip when it tossed
the crutch.
there has never been
a
minute of peace on the
border of two
countries;
on the outskirts of
sanity;
in the soil below
a shattered
window.
III.
i recall the bicyclist eviscerated
by a cassowary
who had no nest or young
to
protect.
she was chemically
unbalanced and torpid.
she was
unknowable.
i fish in the same
water where
foam hardly
blows out
of tide and wind has no pulse. so
only a bactrian camel
has any
business
to fling a rider and deserts
percolate while
rocks are
confused
in their memory. only the crush
of breeze
can be called a wind without a pulse.
only the flippers of a drowning
seal
will cast foam to the surface.
gondolas spitting love oases
in plastic waves;
my mind, at best,
is
a slip of the tongue,
primeval or
modern, unevolved.
my signature means
everything on paper,
nothing in sand.
and so,
cuneiform
migrates to
thought like
a
butterfly
from
a poisonous
caterpillar. and i
recline
with a drying cold
compress
in darkness,
without eliminating
a
sun.
there are no
beetles that
can swim to the
plodding
of directionless
feet; no tadpoles
have
ever become frogs
in
the vagueness
of a rotting
tree
and there
is still no mystery playing on
anyone’s scalp
that can
damage
time.
the soil i crawl
on
is the flinty
crust
of earthworms
that wakes me
in the boomerang
of sleep.
night is as
buried in dark
as dying
permafrost hopes
to be and what
remains
of my
fingerprints
are tiny crucibles
thirsty for
voodoo.
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