238. The Color of Sunrise

The pressure of proportion
relieves as it suppresses

In the morning the desert
is a vine slithering to your window
and the least voice heard
is the thrumming of your heart
awake to moving

Distances entangle themselves
in your vision and you cannot
tell the mountain from the car
you tell to go home because
you don’t need to move anymore

The rigidity of virtue
kept you in starches
(shirts and potatoes)
all those many years
and you raised quail
for their eggs the size
and strength of tears

If there were rain
you would be king

(I must start over again
for I have lost my place
in line and I’ve no idea
if I am next or one text)

A quarter for a quince
its jelly the perfect receptacle
for sunlight

When winter comes
it seems to come
down the mountain
rushing as if hoping
for spring

The night terrors
were from the idea that the morning
would show things
to be just the same as they were

Either a cravat
or a noose
either fashion
or death

Disengage and
you might be
able to see they
who are standing
behind you those
who you thought
were shadows
of trees but there
were no trees there

I can’t sleep
for you and the creeping
shadow of dwarfish cacti
cannot satisfy a desire
for company

We are all lonely
in the absence of ourselves

When we are doing something
we are blind to that absence

When we sit in our bedside chairs
early in the morning before the light
and waiting for morning to happen
that absence fills us like water

Drowning in the desert
faces into the sand

Strop or strap
they are the same thing
and a close shave is sharpest
when it pauses
at the jawline

Bleeding is a way of
breathing out
without the chance to
breathe back it

After his accident
the women frantically sopped up the blood
with their skirts and
their hands with
towels and cloths
even though they couldn’t
put it back in.