Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The Fold

A gesture
she begins
distance
quietly

We are soft
in our decay
instead of letting go
her hands
disintegrate

She leaves me
with longing
and cold defeat

I waft between
feeling stolen
and the romantic memory
I’ve crafted to exalt her

Then there’s annihilation

A meteorite collides
I think from nowhere
but its trajectory
had all my points
as if each
of my arbitrary motions
were isocline

Had I a more intimate
knowledge of physics
I would have seen it coming

I would have not only felt
a quiver in her affection
but also its wanderlust

Blindsided
the pain comes now
in waves
through my neck
chest
stomach
doubling me

As if the extraction
of one heart from another
were as natural
as neutral
as math

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Echo—for Lyn Hejinian

let it not be destroyed
by the passage of time

42° N 53’, 78° W 53’—Buffalo. our bones welcome
your bones. the red wire is positive, will produce sound
—registers in your ear after you understand location. inertia.
a desire to describe environment at the level of cell vibration
and the sterility of ash. grammars are codified when “the”
way of speaking is threatened. how often does it sun over there,
and over there, when it is raining here? when you are “in”
the moment it is hard to imagine that there are others. remember
the shrapnel—the beautiful mosaic it made in your legs, shards
of blood that streamed to coalesce at your feet. it’s the way she holds
her head, averted towards the ground. was it then you realized
you would live always in the wake of an “other’s” choices?
30° N 07’, 89° W 93’on a bayou wall in New Orleans—
live like you mean it.
somewhere between the molten elevator door and
the blasted-out window
I chose against burning. the white wire is negative, will produce silence
—registers in your gut before you understand. she exists as an entity
to be taken from. when does thick thin? falling apart at the seam as
opposed to sudden rupture. it has capsized against your idea of
happiness. his claim was that everything was explainable through
an equation. today is the day after you killed me. my bones,
diaphanous, move through walls, under fingernails and into
your constant memory.