Who distributes the live or die
after juice is refused, the egg is fried?
Faced with its staggering number of runny noses
the day begins, begins again, talks above
the motor left running.
Then I pay what I am asked to pay
to enter the kiss,
the low bow
that does not touch the forehead to a scatter of needles
because the dove never comes
when the distance from wreckage to shore
is rimmed with yearning
suggesting once upon a time, our addiction to telling,
is all effort to shape what surfaces within the sane.
Ignore your own devastation and it doggedly shadows, resurfacing
across the first version, the flat world, forcing you within
the real conversation you hold with yourself.
If abandoned rage asks, Who should answer for this?
Say, the very blood of our lives eats composure up.
Or milk on the tongue tasted rude, unfortunate. And hunger
awoke as human. On all sides, riddled. Broken
and broke against. Inside, by earlier years, shook.
I am remembering the hours lived in, steep steps
angled, and the going up and down burdened before
the certain hand went out, pushed—
if only—
or to go again, doing nothing
to stop hurt releasing a body out. We live through, survive
without regard for the self. Forgiving
each day insisting it be forgiven, thinking
our lives umbilical, tied up with living with how far
we can enter into hell and still sit down for Sunday dinner.
Inconsolable outdoorness of the heart
and the self—not to bridge that—with limbs vexed,
irises fretting the skinniest of hopes, out of wall cracks, upended
intestines, these organs, this imageless throat, much more than mud
locked together, microscopic genes, freezing surface of spleen,
crush of leaves beneath until the fragmented shadow
readjusts, until who I am differs. Then to pray from this body,
waiting—Dear, heart, you break in two. You do not break into.
Privately,
dukes up, duel or duck, beat on,
or laughter: swollen, leaking in
to appeal, To die.
For in the hysteria, craven.
To the life loved: I have given
my hand, my word:
solemn, the oath. And yet, still here, I am
cringing into
or tipped in the bone: no cushion here.
And the next minute with no clear word to speak
and sore-shouldered,
feeling foolishly subdued,
I do not say (not yet,
not quite), Reasoned out—Telephoned,
I’ll meet the party: dulcet is the Dubonnet
and yet the face cannot turn to turn the blind eye,
so monstrous is the stretch
across this cloudy spot on the cornea.
The resolution: to outride, outride: (what
the blues pull in. And in,
I don’t know, I arrived unprepared for the lobed, dark-
grayed matter of “wearisome” and cannot weep
so cannot wake scaled-back,
calm, outside the mirror.
as if anguishing should be excrement:
a flabby stink unbandaged
left out overnight:
as if anguishing should be
seeping intrusion hacked into:
as if anguishing:
The plunging. This time complex
neckline. This time phlegmatic
clavicle unburied—
which is a complicated situation.
His bibulous baby pulls her knees in.
When she gets to be happy
she is happy, but every smile this time
is a transaction—
fluey, bluesy, she is, she isn’t.
Any other night he would have
wanted to bed her, his red carpet runaway,
his simper silly—
black mascaraed down to her ankle,
unavailable tonight,
over the counter comes (wink wink)
points of upturned lip. crow’s-feet
embellishing the split eye.
roll away the nonsense. crumple.
cancel the flaming hoop.
feel sorry don’t.
take out the bathwater (slippery
the floor). sit down the long while.
(mosquitoes abundant. limit of white wall. stray thread. this tendency to worsen. the lowest throw at dice. the smallest amount. no subtleties. no who calls through the door. far from. skin enclosing. low-slung treachery. threat of. giving thirst back to the table. drawn breath holding. the shut eye.
peekaboo—
A she collapsing. some possible. some coherence unfastened.
nothing acceptable. nothing stitched together:
one mind but that mind cannot—
______________as if the world, extrinsic,
were methodically the wrong fountain, the one where water
is stagnant, the drainage blocked by nature’s things: leaves,
moss, dirt the wind put here:
I apologize, but I do not apologize.
(to sit next to the self.
to wait. the chair next to the bed.
to wait. and not for this.
to wait. so, naturally
in some wish working the way a grin does, stupidly
sweet.
in the before. the after. and before. October, a dull red.
on the way to. a morning’s incoherence. all teeth and gum.
as the smell of fire lingers without warmth. the fact imprisoned
in wrong mind.
in plain sight. circling the light like moths. like ashes.
to wait. in the way of.
to wait. either way. waiting.
And like the ones who can see what the day sees
but cannot hold its vision in destiny, I understand
and the agility to understand makes no difference:
there is this about me: I feel bad
as if grief needs to be and is in the end, anyway.
The tongue is a muscle
simply strolling along.
She said:
Crumbling is a neck bone as some distress
that called itself flame
burnt a life down, and rude was the laughter
lodged in whose throat?
Tongue, tasting of rue, added:
Or on its own
a mouthful of muddy water you can swallow.
One comes to this place of being born—here is necessary.
Hear its sorrow. Always again, its beauty in your eyes.
In the tone you pity.
Day sky responded:
Some lift their arms, feel remorse in their knees, candle
after candle lit and all the weeping with its straightforward
face—
to benefit doubt—
Unhyphen the self from the part that cannot
leave the cruelty of this. For it is
better to curse, Shut up, Shut up, before understanding sets in.