At first there were too many branches so he cut them and then it was winter. He meaning you. Yes. He would look out the window and stare at the trees that once had too many branches and now seemed to have too few. Is that all? No, there were other attempts, breakfasts: plates served, plates carried away. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He likes the feel of the coffeepot. More than the hacksaw? Yes, and he likes flipping the chairs, watching them fill with people. He likes the orange juice and toast of it, and waxed floors in any light. He wants to be tender and merciful. That sounds overly valorous. Sounds like penance. And his hands? His hands keep turning into birds and flying away from him. Him being you. Yes. Do you love yourself? I don’t have to answer that. It should matter. He has a body but it doesn’t matter, clean sheets on the bed but it doesn’t matter. This is where he trots out his sadness. Little black cloud, little black umbrella. You miss the point: the face in the mirror is a little traitor, the face in the mirror is a pale and naked hostage and no one can tell which room he’s being held in. He wants in, he wants out, he wants the antidote. He stands in front of the mirror with a net, hoping to catch something. he wants to move forward into the afternoon because there is no other choice. Everyone in this room got here somehow and everyone in this room will have to leave. So what’s left? Sing a song about the room we’re in? Hammer in the pegs that fix the meaning to the landscape? The voice wants to be a hand and the hand wants to do something useful. What did you really want? Someone to pass this with me. You wanted more. I want what everyone wants. He raises the moon on a crane for effect, cue the violins. That’s what the violins are for. And yes, he raises the moon on a crane and scrubs it until it shines. So what does it shine on? Nothing. Was there no one else? Left-handed truth, right-handed truth, there’s no pure way to say it. The wind blows and it makes a noise. Pain makes a noise. We bang on the pipes and it makes a noise. Was there no one else? His hands keep turning into birds, and his hands keep flying away from him. Eventually the birds must land.
Until the sky gives up its unendurable beauty of Bach heard by someone alone in her room dying, I wish for this sadness to leave but it will never leave. But I am also glad: I know that at this very moment your poor head is resting on Christ's breast; I know you are comfortably seated at the Buddha's feet, listening forever to his calm voice and waiting on me, me still failing here, toward you, and following in the bodiless footsteps of God, most peripheral and unlikely of followers, keeping an eye on Him from a distance and hoping to remain among the unnoticed in love. I am certain you have now contributed your creature's small light to the great peal of Light still issuing from the beginning, and rapidly traveling towards us from the end...
"It has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."
I swear to God I swear at God I won't mention what He does to me I lack nothing I need unless you count everything I want I'm meant to be spreading tenderness over the earth like seeds like worms instead I've been shoveling coal into burning houses fanning the ash hold your applause hold the horns curling out from my skull which are getting so long now and so sharp if you think of evolution as ancestral advice then a baby's eyelids drooping from fruitsugar could mean this world is too sweet to bear awak give me an orgy of sleep give me sleep from every angle for years I stood in the semeny ginko staring at my hands believing in afterlives thinking one day I'd wake into a new kind of body like a fish suddenly breathing air through its eyes it's easy to give life as a gift pull fisherman from frozen water or put a puppy in a Christmas box but it's harder to remember stillness is also a prize consider the composer's fever and the aria it delivered or the begger who woke to find a jewel in his palm once I saw a girl's death mask smoothed by the kisses her father gave her nightly once I cut open my thigh on a razor wire fence and filled the wound with Kleenx somehow it healed leaving only a long white scar the penalties for my disregard have always been oversoft deterring nothing I've made it clear I am not to be trusted with a body always leaving mine bloodless as ice with just a needle of breath left in its lungs sometimes when I run I run like a beautiful man in a straight lines clean as spidersilk sometimes if I'm silent for long enough even the wild around me stops moving
It's not the long, flowing dress that you're in Or the light coming off of your skin The fragile heart you protected for so long Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong It's not your hands searching slow in the dark Or your nails leaving love's watermark It's not the way you talk me off the roof Your questions like directions to the truth
It's knowing that this can't go on forever Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone Maybe we'll get forty years together But one day I'll be gone Or one day you'll be gone
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
art credit.
sketchingsparrow.
hydrea.
sketchingsparrow.
theirishhalfling.
sketchingsparrow.
sketchingsparrow.
megzilla87
megzilla87
sketchingsparrow.
sketchingsparrow.
megzilla87.
bailiesartblog.
annazees.
sketchingsparrow.
alienfirst.
alienfirst.
annazees.
pixelllls.
pixelllls.
siriusdraws.
tabletop-miracles.
sketchingsparrow.
unfinished duet, richard siken.
the two, franz wright.
d., 1959 - 2005, franz wright.
no subject
liturgies, yves olade
second dream, max ritvo
dawn of man, max ritvo
return of the king, tolkein
thirstiness is not equal division, kaveh akbar
why are your poems so dark, linda pastan
congratulations, dessa
if we were vampires, jason isbell and the 400 unit
hymns and fragments, carl philips