she paces the length of speech,
sidelong glances past surface, to its vast
lack. and she loosens, streams into
the gaps - before, during,
after.
expands.
she's not spoken
for weeks.
silence, acutely exhausted.
listen, nod,
understand within a
flat drop abandonment -
herself of herself
assuming form, lost
in the sound of
sound.
studying the sky, reeducating herself on color and things
before things had names, before
the divisive unravel. in the beginning of the end: word-ing -
intellect-launched capacity to worship
itself. cutting apart each moment in aphasia-like halts.
there is no third person,
no different drum.
winds heavy with the scent of other lives,
leaking wet lavender brush fire - an arsonists emotive pressure,
sore, inflamed and livid. fast curves, stay focused on the yellow line.
somewhere, the elements collide and make rain made heavy with pulled down dust.
elevator drop-fail to catch itself - thunder shifts her heart to an anatomically
unlikely location.
incorrect.
alleys full of couches without pillows, gutted appliances, dying plants
and she grasps why some pretty things get
thrown away - lightening frames the inconsequential
with reverence - this, she misses in the thick
sub zero.
warmer months, walking below a streetlight that flickers and dies -
right as she's passing. does this happen to everyone
or so often?
to happen.
the possibilities of taking one firm step towards any compass point leaves her spinning.
smoke odor, burnt oil, she walks through electricity towards anything carrying a pulse.
it is all carnival; there are men in shadow and she hears earth shifted by their feet.
no entrance to focus on, entranced and scattered energy,
all the places she's never been to, pulling.
half sleep walk, half life, half empty - becoming another element,
tasting salt - life giving. controlling the moon, the pressure
of blood, a cliff eaten back, is still
a cliff. thoughts like and unlike this adrift and crashing against
her stillness, their birth and aliveness, rich stores. moment initiates,
again, again.
everything is always new. she is too tired to smile in the throes of her own madness
and too polite to air its bright gloss tangles, all spit spark and greased slick.
she prefers incoherence, cacophony abstracted - this, she needs
so much. legs feel weak though they are
stronger than a man's - vocal chords sting with a song that has wanted inside her
for longer than longing - soft and hoarse and filled with ugly poetry men whisper to women
who are lost.
she doesn't know why he touched her or his name - disconnected - a visitor to the hour
unfrightened.
old memory. no more safer from her than she is from it.
un. huge hands full of calluses that catch in her hair
pinned down by the centrifugal force of her own awareness - coherent and calm and listening
to light burn out somewhere very far away - blood and ink - every writer tattoos this
world. its flesh says only yes.
even to the graffiti.
an utterance of night
that is curative - a salve murmur.
the human perfume and chant in scent
heard suddenly as if just delivered
but vortexed in the old, old.
ugly wax flowers fighting sunlight and steam - places where earthquakes occur daily -
the rocks move more quickly - you can witness their breath
and direction - a willingness to learn how to love - again - travel only through nights
without clouds - drinking a lover's sweat and then painting their likeness
in the sand - right on the fault line. we all have them.
she almost speaks -
