exposito!

i'm doing something that falls within maybe the general idea of ekphrasis--trying to write a poem while a particular song's on repeat.  the song for the "clenchtooth/roses" and "i am a sonneteer/song" posts was that "by your side" song from the winged migration soundtrack (i don't know what it's called; my friend lent me a copy); the song for "the candy man can/vacuum" was "candy man" by cibo matto.  just thought i might as well explain a little what the process was, because it seems like i'm not writing what i know, but what the song makes me know--that is, maybe the same object as i would see otherwise, but viewed through wildly various panes of stained glass.  so it's a little like writing as a character, except it's not.  i've lost any grasp on truth i might have claimed at one point...or maybe, like shakespeare's hands (though of course not within the same compass, much less league), the object just takes flight.  i can't be writing about nothing...but i can't provide ontological proof of what i am writing.  not that it particularly matters.  anyway, from now on if i write something in this mode, i'll put the name of the song and the artist in the keyword box.  and now you know!

within these groves

1. retreat into rhyme

push trench:

entrench similar but further forward--

hold off engagement of flesh on flesh, piece on piece--hold off for red velvet and rare black silk, extract

the heave of a breast or two.

late night excavation of black lace

eruption like ready volcano:

draw that curtain, show that picture; peaks and valleys ripple on ripple like flame-lined ridge.

2. jigoku hen

more, o stars, more, more--

mouths split past their shapes.  bleach blackest velvet:

white down glare and every melting thing sticky against itself,

the collapse into liquid, flesh rolling down relevatory saccharine gravity

bone to bone, joint to joint--

i 

smell 

your fur.

i smell it

in my 

nose.

3, 4, 5. the hunt/the slant rhyme

multipart seductions of transmissions, substitutions, black leather jesses:

a desperate hart weighted for a desperate arrow: run back to me, love--

st. sebastian: poached.

(run back to these arms, 

that these linked fingers may run 

through your hair 

and down your face

where the blood races, rivers, sweet wet so close to surface.

run back to sweet wet rhyme, my love--

be like mine, my love, my love, my love.)