354. Once I

No difficulty to it:

There is just this heart
belching in my chest

And the bonobos chattering
in the dreams of women

Caution is the form of sunshine
we receive in May

And may I introduce you
to this simple idea?

Complexity is the simplest
of surfaces, and slippery too

A hand without fingerprints
still leaves a smudge

And we cannot wash off the blood:
We must, instead, love how we incarnadine

There is the pleasure of spilling
even our own blood through our own fingers

You can feel the pulse
in the slipping away

And the sunshine that comes with it
warms as the bloodless body cools

It is spring and everything
is green and burgeoning in the suburbs

The smell of skunk
fills night air with romance

The sound of a poem, you see,
is similar to the sound of breaking glass

Shards in the heel
keep a heart moving

The problem people see, I think,
is need for a straight line right through a point

Right through
to a point

There is narrative.
There just isn’t determined sequence

When you first realized the maples had leafed out
into a rich green, did you feel it?

Green is the
opposite of blood

When they told me they would saw me open at the sternum,
they thought I would be afraid

Death is a process
that hampers the blood

These words need no translation or
interpretation, just perception

Treat these as a patient
who merely is

It is like listening to the sound
of breathing through beating blood

Swish
and swish

It is as it is.
We come to see it

I imagine you as I write these
words: listening

You can hear the words
as you hear the body’s blood

Blood sloshing
in the caverns of the body

The rushing seawater
of this lambent body

We see best
by candlelight

You listen better
with eyes closed

The blood
through your ears

The voice’s answer
coming to you

So much to understand from the body,
so much to understand from the words

No difficulty to it:
and thanks from me