acrostic II

sometimes i look up into the night

and get dizzy.

thinking of where you may be.

that smile i don't know.

drop,

words,

is this what

you mean?

do you continue

gambling

on meaning?

seismic shifts felt

like the line

of alpine ridge

of teeth

of fireblasted hills:

words i love you.

make my heart your own.

call it across the inanimate water and

call it again.  name each pulse,

that behind the ear 

that at the ankle.

tell me my body

part by part and

thus remake me

in your mouth.

take even my fingers

from me.

take even the curve

of my neck.

take away 

even the shadow

of my blood

in its vein.

i broke down in east saint louis

for tom waits

we discover strength in pain.

for in the heart that bleeds is found the blood that gives us best.

in every bloom is the flesh of the dead thing that made up the ground.

this is what it means to dig.

this is what it means to take shovel and break the earth.

that the seed may foster its loveliness, the breathless press of its promise.

taste the air: it is sepulchral with love.

for in every breath we find our heart mimicks itself as if linear, as if parallel, as if married within itself, secretly.

but instead it twists like a knot, rising against itself.

like hands, for no reason.

or like eyes, tying themselves in together.

together like pulse we are and always shall be each other.

and if our devotions frighten it is because they are flesh.

this is why i am strong.

i am a double knot.  with love.  

fingers, rub raw, and wrists, take impress will or no:

i am love itself.

emulata

second day:

wash off 

the accustomed black cake

and find red mouth

underneath,

translucent like

gills, and

pink shape.

for if we are fish

we recreate the 

water.

and when we are

werewolves

our lycanthropy

revolves 

the moon

and as leaves we

turn

momentous red.

to trade sex

for pain is

to remake teeth

new and

retongue prophets,

to make paper

tongue stone

as promised.  the dart of an eye

like

fish

silvered

in a pond:

the teeth a crack.

like water to water

love to love runs back.

shrinktage: horror movie part 7 "rusted scopophile and prom princess"

for my consideration: saffron deluge for the skirt and the bodice made out of locust-colored velvet, velvet in excess of color.  she tastes her teeth with the tip of pinked

tongue.  in the mirror she smiles like constellation.

and here i am for her i love.

i am here to sniff for what she leaves.

collecting hairs off the floor when she is gone:

the smell of aquanet

presses against back-eyelids

like empurpled devotion, rich almost to poison--

i see her in

the strands of

the hilton carpet,

as if 

she 

a veronica

formed

from out

her very presence.  hhhhhh

heliotropic patterning against inward eyelid and tinly shingle pattern on the eardrum slur, arpeggiate, 

alpine collation of breaths, rough-edged against the ground and i hit and hit the floor i hit the floor there is a music to it.

there is a music

to it, oh god.  taste that sweet music

like blood in the irrigate mouth.

le bateau ivre

for foucault, for whatever reason

this time i slogged through muddy waters and my trousers clung almost up to my thighs.

disembarkation my reputation is built on.  ambiguating myself between left and right thigh.  like the chafe of pantaloons.

the dawn is still dark.  there are birds.  the water eddies thickly.  of course not cold, never cold but my god.  the water is to whence my boat returns when i find the shore.  but in this lightless hinterland there is

nothing but

the rock

of my own body.

against which

i hurl.

but the boat

is gone

anyway.

sine: the ballet, movement 2

bear the traces 

not too eagerly--

snort not, and blow not

like a stretch-nostrilled horse

ridden over a dry plain.

like underwater,

let all movements be 

secret in their strength. 

fluid and mock-ingenuous

though cracking,

crying

for lack of water.

the root searches deep.

let every bloom lack

nothing.

touch up

the painted broom,

and to each sunrise

add a waxen sheen.

ten thousand girls

on their backs, undulant:

nails dig sheets down

dry.

dry.

dry.

cosine: megaballet

the jointed bamboo stiff like still fingers in front of

the moon, grooved joints darker-pooled

ink shadow than the rest.

once again i hove to shore myself.  i had 

been out on a boat all the sunset.  washing

my face like a concerned parent with a blood

soaked cloth.  seeping into the lake too so that

i floated in red.  the sweet lilies daubed creamy 

pink like raw tuna.

the moon now like a raw pearl.  i tasted ash

on the air and looked to from whence it might

have come.

the leaves rustle.  the shafts of the plants

are tight-celled, smooth, cool.  i rest my hide

against them as once was done,

and my flesh

shivers.

meanwhile 

the boat is

gone again,

though the water's

still.

something in the way it moves

sine

sweet lucy

your lips black as bing cherry

spine sinuous sweet

as sweet black earth-curves

diamonds

inexcavate

bright red with

heat.

sweet lucy, lucy,

sweetest lucy.

half-nape,

total clavicle,

all

fluid

all

deep impact.

cosine

i find you move

at the edge of mind

like finger: quiet cellular nail.

half-moon. excavate.

teach me for that

the sine. teach me that

quite, quite sine.

but i was blank like the yellow moon, blank

like teeth in a sale window, blank on display

and inside worked so carefully your finger,

your nail like half-moon, your diatribe of hair

and your square tooth.

you soft me, whole me, you cover me in your lead

and your belly-smelting of furs and naked petals.

bruise like magnolia. and your jaw so firm.

you sluice me: pour yourself through cracks in skin and bone, and you harden, and i break. i break so hard and far, break cosmically, time wrapped about space like hair about a cunt. slush and fluids, splinter of light--light sharp, under nail, slammed to the bedpost.

i remember stones.

tasting of heat and shoe.

the smell of day.

i remember the dry academic feel

of the crinkling moss-tops:

rhizome like a sweater

i enjoyed--a comforting appeal.

i remember your high white tops.

the spark of sand against teeth, the feeling

of eating box.

there were no mistaken words,

no speaking fracas. splinters and the taste

of wood in sun: warm, soft

pricking against a tongue

roseate as dawn.

stentory

visionary taste

as of peas.

crack of dark stint

alpine smell--blue white cut

into blue sky

the smell of vision.

deep purpled oyster and the crank stem

of the greased machine: silver

sated taste of saltines,

bright cheddar:

cypresses bend in absent wind,

bent to silence and misery.

they hold their bending

like a trophy.

i,

replete as emptied,

personally.

quietus

i should have figured you in five long ago. the bright version of your presence and the dark surge of my blood to the base of the skin and out like red surging statue. sparks freed as if from twain gears charging each other sides on sides. i am distinctly attenuated as if to sound. beat being more than sound. it is magnet as if pulse. it keeps us in two or more. and it is physical because it pulls along heart through teeth and against skin. all art being body words therefore those to which i subject myself like i would subject sharpnesses to me.

carve in the blossom. carve in the hard bloom. winter shines out and flowers come into the earth.

meanwhile the wind rises, as if about itself, as if about itself.

a drip through the shutters. solo: droplet and working mouth, lip opening and closing like your moth--as if, as if, as if (beat, beat). tongue tonguing itself.

i am watchful for

every sound. things bleed

through the wall

and i

cannot stop them:

rifts sifting out, seeming smoothed

like milky time

and then

noise. listening is to have bled:

body weeping red.

shapeshifter

sweet rust-colored honey.

the softness of a plum in a hand
that you gave to my mouth.

later i wrapped myself
in your pelt.

as if a girl in a tree,
leaving half myself behind
when coming to you--

glistening like a newborn, or
skin rubbed free of a scab--

landscape metaphor

later, abandoned to some tide i knew nothing of,
waters under my hull incompliant as a greased pig,
i washed ashore. the sun, folding into the ocean,
cast out light with the thin freshness of blood,
the tall trees dyed roseate pink, rich, and smoke blue,
the light catching on certain vertiginous edges of the things i saw
as though they were strange sacral objects
scattered with glass beads.
there were hot winds beteeming me like breaths,
curving like the pink inflesh of shells;
the trees danced, ruching against themselves
like a bespangled curtain
in a deep-colored illustration
leapt from its page,

leapt like flames, snapping,
tensile, in on fine red air.

i crawled into the sand,
my hand
tasted it. retained heat
rolled
up to me, damp warmth,
and my breath met its
fine
exhalation.

no-one around--
no-one to seemy exhaustless
devotions.
my ship rolled
away into night
on the rickety
water
and i lay
reverencing the shore.