149. Gargling and Panting

even in the night when
the light on the leaves of
the trees outside the window
looks like frost and the cold comes
in good enough to turn my voice back
to mist even in the night when I am not
where I might be and wrinkle space in
a segmented stretch of darkness and
where she cannot know I am for I
am no longer there even in the
night when the sun’s burned
down into the low-lying
mountains even in the
night before I sleep

I write not a word
but a series of them
as if the writing of these
symbols of sound might send
a message out into the next day
to someone who’d not expected it
as she’d not expected the surprise of
the day itself not the simple fact of its
beginning but the way in which it actually
occurred because it is what happens that
surprises us not what we imagine will
happen because we’ve already thought
of that and that never had the chance
to become and to try to resemble the
surprise of opening to find some
liquid unexpected thing and
make from it the crescent-
shaped cry of two car
alarms going off at
once as if a sudden
symphony

throbbing and
then throbbing and
never warning anyone
of anything and it is the
sound of hunger of wanting
of a baby’s cry of the hand out
and reaching but never grasping
the other end of the handshake it
is a music like whistling down the alley
to the darkness to the streetlamp making
out the shape of a figure walking either
towards you or away or a representation
of what the shape of a person might be
if this were a darker night or colder or
given to exaggeration about its ability
to represent the deepest dread you
hold within you and carry like a
sad and crying baby through
the alley in such a way that
we see you are trying to
suppress its own tears

when you think of
those tears you think
sweet like cyanide like
crystal like glass like rake
like puddle of oil like clank of
one shovel against hydrant like
orchestra like ostrich like stone
like molt like organ like song like
minions like swale like swelling
like swollen like ocean like two
like dogs like bark like now like
you like aria like simple like
tremulous like slow like roar
like torpedo like diary like
paltry like pantry like swish
like swirl like asafetida like
notion like reaching like
twice like wholesome
like concentrated like
tendril like anvil
like soughing
like arc