87. obthoughts

Poised in mid-thought and moving through,
a slip of lavender in the crook of an arm,
we examine the ways of becoming what we always were.

Terror at the lightest touch and a blanket for sleeping,
the smallest scent cannot keep you here,
tremblings at the moving and the thought of it.

Warmth in syringes and the fluid flows through,
there is no blood in veins, no air in the needle,
those two veins by the wrist are tendons.

What passes for night is morning, night after night,
the sound of typing resembles self-flagellation,
recondite is what the song said it always was.

Divulge what you cannot divorce your mind from,
aerate the memory so that it might float away,
deliver every message on a silver anvil.

Orthodoxy requires more knowledge than I can manage,
interpreted for the purposes of obfuscation,
every translation is a transliption.

The lips of the matter exist in pairs, variously placed,
and there are songs that arrive from both,
inescapably moves the notion that nothing can end that doesn’t begin.

Unable to accept the means of living in denial,
relieved of every burden and still no relief,
the name of the animal was unknown but known to be beautiful.

Arrayed in rows like roses, and the order belied their essential nature,
where at the top of a small hill a forked tree might stand,
as we stand, forked, and sturdy, even when walking unsteadily forth.

Deliberate in the ways of forgetting,
a canker memory that wouldn’t heal from the mind,
sudden sharp flickerings of the past before evaporation.

A sheet of paper, a sheet of bed, a sheet of water to cool,
the small headache that grows between not sleeping and writing,
loss of it all, and the loss of it all, and the final loss.

Lightbulb for warmth, fire for illumination, and bits of bread,
a mouth could take into itself a small bite of it,
what swallow is hard or hardly is maybe a breath.

To consume in pattern and believe the pattern good,
artificial coffee and enough white pasta to fill,
an offer of beans and shrimp and cilantro for good health.

The various tones of silence screaming in our ears,
no possibility of sleep so replaced by sleeplessness,
docile despite the constant drone of death.

Face fat with cheeks and cheeks fat with smiles,
the baldness of the sun and what the bald sun shines upon,
even a broken nose can taste the bouquet of cognac.

The ease with which one can give up what they don’t want,
difficulty catching every raindrop you need to fill a hand,
abandoned at an early age by hope.

Whittling out of wood some imagined shape of wood,
whatever is exquisite in whatever doesn’t exist,
and what would the color of her eyes be when closed?

Opening a jar of marbles or jellybeans,
whether a tooth would chew it or not,
daunting mysteries covering the face of darkness.

Constantly absent,
rigidly disorganized,
happily lost.

Finding a dead thing you thought had run away,
providing it a burial in a suitable tin can,
piling the rocks so the dogs won’t dig it up.

A sock on a foot for warm, a sock on a nether or naught,
a sheet and a blanket, and dreaming of fire,
a light in the refrigerator like a beacon pointing home.