I cannot hold you, deep rhythm,
like fireflies caught this moment like a grain innumerable

the sun slips through my broken window,
and I wash the silence with birds.

Stalks

Stalks of corn blow in the wind.

I run through you, cutting

my naked arms,

bare legs

on your leaves.

The sun like

warm bread

wraps around me.

My smile spreads

the pale blue sky.

Freedom runs through me.

I am part of the land.

I stop before

a totem:

a corn stalk laced with ice,

silent, unmoved,

too angry for the wind to touch.

I melt a moment

and tears spring like so much grass

after the snow thaws.

broken color

world finds nothing smart

like fireflies turning

the page rosy

instead, we break into

mud rush fish

swim the ether

cords tangle until knots

form like fetuses

yellow, empty belly

tears limp inside, ask

to get out

crystalline salty ringers

trigger dashes water away

dismantle finger pieces,

discover blue wilts

like tarnished tiger lilies,

their dusty faces

remembrances or translations

of orange-ginger grain;

their texture pushes

against the slate

words slide into some

dirty water, disintegrate

into wholeness again.

The Weather Inside

The weather looks inside,

wears down my body

inches and inches, pounds and pounds.

I find a belly in the mouth of each beast I meet.

The scent of daffodils and fire

rests on my tongue.

They would never dance for me,

Not in this ecstatic moment of pressure,

Building into witness.

I am a structure

bleeding and breathing arches,

in tune with steel and concrete.

I bless your mouth, impress horns and tails

onto your body like ancient wings.

This is what we find: struggle and more of the same.

Fall

The sound of the rake against

the pavement moves me to the window.

I examine the crooked bones,

follow them down

to forgotten flesh, which builds below.

The remaining flesh slowly forgets how to ache,

what colors are, how to access memory.

I’m attending a memorial service –

bags line our streets like lies

to be taken away by familiar strangers. I could make a song out of you.

We decompose; sentences disintegrate into silent earth, fall under snow –

oceans we find inside ourselves daily

wash away; too much of a tide pulls

the curtain across inside-eyes.

We no longer see in speech

the way we had conceived.

Discoveries

Body is not like paper, tape, a vegetable or protein.

Body is not against body. Body does not want body to slip.

Mouth is not part of body? Mouth sweeps body out from under itself, like brain.

Brain removes self from body by defamiliarization and or deconstruction or and destabilization and or disassociation and or depersonalization.

Wholeness implies fragmentation.

Splits become inevitable when brain-body parts are seamed together in the fragmented moment.

When goatskin is used to patch up body parts, they get especially brainy and subject to fragmentation.

Roadkill body rediscovers and must reinvent and bind body. Body feels used, scraped, and betrayed by brain for brain said body was in a safe place.

When goatskin covers body’s eyes, the smell of fresh rosemary will wake brain from illusion. Memory must be reenvisioned.

Illusions and discoveries such as roadkill and goatskin, among other moments bury body continually in dirt past.

Dirt past is made of sticks, dirt, moss, stones, decongesting body, decomposing body, decompressing body. To dig through dirt past and present will tire brain/body.

Digging through dirt past and present hardens body, polishes brain.

Brain/body communicates brilliantly, shines like a spotlight, illuminating parts of brain/body that fell through fissures.