catharsis

you am become death you, the shatterer only the grind of glass and pushing daisies follow

but I am become life revived from the cash crop in my tobacco leaf dress with my domesticated hair and my penny skin the token at the table high yellow sitting wishing to scrub my blood black

and now I am stepping on the iron of throats eroded choking down that slow swallow of cotton fuzz and now I am sitting hot in the winter because Turner’s burn left a fever in my roots

that slow swallow, that deep burn

I see myself in embers of red in nothing and no matter how I talk I’m always sputtering oil because I’m sure that I’m no man and to use my voix is to hold a match to that crude

black liquid 

I see myself in the truth of burning paris I see myself in the myth of who burned paris 

and I am sure that I’m no virgin but I can feel that I am red and black and crude 

I am red in nothing and I am in negation and I am always spitting oil

I am in visions of burning paris cloaked in red because to act not as man is to hold a match and my hands are ashen my thumbs blistered and I am waiting wavering glowing in this nothing wavering waiting for the smile of red carnations to relieve me

You tell yourself to kill your darlings and you cry as you hit that backspace and you wonder if those words will ever know their worth to you, even when they don’t make the finished product.  

If it is all universal then you hope one day you can spill your soul onto a single page as big as the echoing chambers of the psyche, as deep as the caverns in your throat, so that you can scream out for Godot and blame him for every lost word you’ve learned to love but never spell, then make a shrine for all the self indulgent passages that never pass revision while you wait for his reply.

density seeps into down and I am the product of the light writhing in the night adhering to this projection of self : scribbled into the soma written into the nerves

and she keeps it lively and she is this room and she is what keeps us intact and we are tangled in the light, and this is recurring -  

the waves of circadian ticks and tocks always bring me back.

through this arrival I find departure from the brown eyes in the mirror, detachment from the face in the image; I am not her.   I am upside down.  

one lingers in the camera obscura and can’t tell.   I am upside down.  

the soul of one being confused for the charade of another; I am pantomiming beams against the wall  

waiting until the solid one establishes itself.

and I am set in diamonds cut from coal tipped words.

and she is ridding the bouquets of forget-me-nots  cowardice in her eyes glinting like cat’s eye   bolded letters giving new meaning to Scaredy Cat   etched in black inside her wedding band;  the only boldness on her person a declaration of wuss.

looking at the tulle of her skirt I wonder if she’ll ever be more than a softer counterpart but gold was never known for its strength.

she was always the petals, never the root I was always the stem, never the petals never the softness, always the grit always the quiet growing stalk pushing  the scorpion grasses up

always hidden under corollas always reaching new heights the perennial framework the lasting support of lapis leaves

yet sororal roots run underneath it all.

the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations the one that likes to sing itself within something of another nature the true gesture of sunrise  the flower delivered from earth  in the narrow flute lacquered needle green of this once again or this never

god is a man and he is the star whose body is called movement and spreads out over the earth and is very close to being alive we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day we are like the watery twist of eel grass floating in the black sea deeps and eddying in the sunlight very close to being alive

this space of time is organized

voices break the indifferent sarcophagus  we need not fear these silences we need not fear these unrecapturable returns out of another life

The hollow needles wrapped in armored skin: the fangs of the python welling with lemon tinged venom that I milk from its throat, bright and warm in its glass, toxicity suspending allure.   Or the cold beat of the penguin’s wing, down fluffed by antarctic air, the wind that flows beneath the unfurled feathers of creatures of land air and sea.   I like to watch their dance in the sky, their beaks a bright streak of tangerine in the clouds, their heads a shadow before fading into golden gradient.   I like to see the blood trickle through the man o’ war’s veins wine red, stark against transparent violet jelly as its tendrils sneak a current through the surface of gray blue waves.

I am awake but this is a world of slumber.  I am its dazed member.  The lasting symbols of unconscious want manifested in crib mobiles and I am the fisted hand reaching up to yank it down.  What else can I do to slap the face with cold water?   If dream’s the wish fulfilled then let me rest and be the decoder, the interpreter, the creator of interpretation.  I wish to be the revealer of trains of musing that never reached the station, of midday reverie, of slips of tongue; to be stringing together the milky lulls of cradle song, the milk of our mothers, the symbols of our fulfillment; unraveling a night’s rest, authoring the sleep, unwinding what only we could have wound in our doze.  

Its perfection is in its ability to fill the palm of a hand, fill the mouth of the feeder, fill the eyes of the looker, and other harsh things.  But for now it rests on a table of mahogany, not unlike the wood of its mother, because somehow all things return home.

Imagine a sphere firm all over but dimpled at its top and bottom.  Imagine it dipped red but stained yellow by the sun.  Imagine a stem grown wiry and hard, snipped short, gone brown; the lasting reminder of its birth.  

If I were to show you an apple, I would show you its birth, its conception matted in bumblebee fuzz.  If I were to write the form of the apple I’d write it on a tree, on the bark of its mother, on the flesh of its ancestor.  I’d remind you of its flowering, of swelling, of thin red skin enveloping sweet flesh.  It is freckled light with pollen and you can almost see your face in its glow.

And in its center an opal jewel, that milky moonstone, cloudy like the local lake I’d spend my summers in suspended in nature far from the city noise or like the fish tank water filled with my first responsibilities or like the lead water of Flint that is noone’s responsibility, et cetera et cetera…

And gold metal twists to frame it, that delicate filigree holding all the feelings of braking too sudden and a mother’s outstretched arm across her child’s chest who is sitting in the passenger seat: that rigid tenderness, that unbending protection.  

And in it is adornment and inklings of narcissism but this is not just finger jewelry.   I can see all the moments of my past and my present and my everbending future reflecting in its lustre; the luxury of now swirling in the opal.

The past aches in bones today.  In the past my mother yells about the crayons on the wall.  The past shifts in bones today.  There are teeth with her name in them.  I am hearing a girl shifting weight from one foot to the other.  I am feeling it all seep into the names.  

There are bones with your name in them.  They soak up the seep.  They scream it like a prayer when the rain falls.  Your name echoes through drops.  Everything aches in bones today.

There is a song crying from above the walkways.  The song of a girl shifting weight from one foot to the other.  The song of a mother’s yell.  They are the same.  And it is aching.  There is no end.  The footsteps were too soft.  The sound of staining is pumping through our veins and This is the end.  I stitch hardness into every word I speak.

When you walk you walk softly.  When you talk you talk softly.  We are all stained wall.  We are all etched bone.  The wall underneath the crayon is stained and these are its veins.  We are its veins.  They pump the pastblood.  Dangling is the closest to living we will ever get.

Let me speak.  These words are soft.  Dangling is the closest to feeling we will ever get.  Let me speak.  These are the days of discovery.  I find the sound.  The names in bone.  The anvil above.  The source of dangling.  I will not say these words are soft.  

And these days I find the end above every walkway.  I am reaching for it.  We are all reaching for it.  This is the dangling that is the closest to singing - closest to yelling - closest to a mother’s yell.  This is eternal.  This is the end.  This is the past.  Life is crying from the bottom of shoes.

Lest I forget that the wheel of fortune has never been spun, this is not the realm of coincidence,

that I sing to a god that is already lodged in my throat

and I kneel before a mirror, the divine intervention in reflection,

staring back with closed eyes, bowed head and unraveled hands waiting

for the pressure of grace to be in palm and wrapped in flesh fingerbone.  

Blood bitten lips’ speech is that scrawled down in sacred scripture and spiral notebooks

and my god is she who sleeps in my sheets, breathes in my clothes, warms the blankets with her life.  

Protect and remind her that the sublime is sunken into the cracks of her soles

and to think ill of a god is blasphemous.

No.  it is veneration; their voices rising simultaneously like a priest lowers his lips to an altar like the burn lowering itself down the stick of incense the scent of musk and mercy in the air; like worship but also like repentance, like human suffering for the result of absolution, like blood bled for the sake of the cup.