from A Park Wished For

From a Time Back to a Plain 

Sky is stumped here and expansive
so that with young poplars from pillar to post
an artisan folds the clouds

Time lies intertwined with all its twists

The sun climbs into my eyes                  
and what I saw of the harsh winter unravels
I come undone in places I held onto you

I ripen as if falling from a tree

Your hands are wet and clear     
From a time back, you harvest me to a plain       
I am a species that can sprout where I cease                

I drape myself in all waters and bright seas




No Fish at All

The ghost of this colossal city, who carries it
Undertakes the sea with its filth and carries it

Painter’s scaffold collapses, couriers are mortal
Dust paints the sun, a host of broken buildings carries it

We met the clean seas first, then we migrated here
They wouldn’t know, past passes the day carries it

Life’s long heat in each drying current, 
like alcohol burning a tall glass, carries it

Each spirit turns back to life, but also like a lingering 
burden from humanity; bears that long voice and carries it 

The children’s voices and the voiceless its cargo,
an iron dragon howls from the metro carries it

Summers sum up fatigue in calendars, even in the spring
they blindly look for each other, a pair of dark glasses carries it

A thick flower fells your neck, slims it in the lamp’s shade
against the sun, a bare bald day remains

As if there is a weariness over you
while the cars and fish pass, the road remains

With each frame the pain grows from 
the phones; reach out and smear so the paint carries it




De Se Et Nunc

They often come out of the woods and find us.
Their voices are so low no one hears
and they carry such resigned melancholy
“My legs señor . . . ” *
Birdcalls were high-pitched, they suddenly
ceased; they either dispersed or reconvened.

In the woods, the rain sounds low
and high as if all of a sudden it’s bursting, like on marble.
From behind the stream of water

                        the broken statue’s glance
and in its surroundings, arboreal manes;
Human voice, as if in monologue, arrogant
as if no one hears, high

Birds are coming back from their wayward way
            They either dispersed
                                    or reconvened.

* from William S. Burroughs, “The ‘Priest’ They Called Him”, in Exterminator! (Viking Press, 1973)




Birdman

Smell of animals, smell of a road, which now exists only
in a photograph and has been leveled with planks, something cold, the wind.
A shore edging the strait, a place where the water humbly flows;
repeating is forbidden, hence all the living dead.
A candy bar wrapper nearby, red.
Shall we release a bird like a balloon? Red. 




Stuttering

one stands before the other. The(y) first would like to talk.
The initial sentence steps into the abyss.
No one hears. Silence from the deepest reaches.
The majority. One current carries it, then the other.

An unease walks the room.
Still no response. Spelled
Hope-ful-less-ness. A minority.
Barely visible in size.

Then darkness speaks on behalf of silence. “Today
was silent,” it says. Such is darkness, holds close its companions.
Ultimately it will either be forgotten or forgotten.
A little mercy, one could say. Not a peep.