BRAVURA

The nightsky holds me in its mouth

like a Kingfisher grasping a minnow.

I pull down the stars & staple them

to these walls. I will plant every one

of these sparkling diamonds,

like a milky-blurred background

in a black-and-white film,

into the overpopulated strangeness

of autumnlong quieted roots.

My hands like tentacles swipe

over the land of the season

as if I were Clockwork

flying out of an old diagram, ink-blotted

sumptuousness, Ciurlionis-like

greased color; an overloaded treasury

of conjoined voices. & the Truth is:

I view myself as a young boy

within a souvenir snowglobe;

the needlework as solid as premature

speech. Childhood is a fishbone

in the mouth of an animal.

I have abruptly left myself in my

own mind, stumbling in place as if

I have something to say but unable

to be as urgent as other poets.

I spew certain memories, their delicacies

invigorating interpretation.

Your particles still remain within

my inward valley; secret eyes, ripe,

like mail-persons reading postcards

before delivering them into the

fatigued mouths of mailboxes.

Memories, with age, are often trimmed

tinier & tinier. A memory

is a peephole, a visible tongue "airing out"

attempting to land someplace

the way a bat inhabits a geography

by sense of Feel. I recall the out-of-body

experience as a child, without thick description,

as I hovered from the window, & then

brought back into "place"---a barely visible

individual standing at the foot of my bed

glaring at me the way a familiar spirit

may create disruptions & bountiful messes

within the orbiting realms of a home.

My meditative spaces need no redemption;

wings of every meaning, sonicspeech

on the tip of my tongue aching for

a "second before," the way a tear

seemingly moves in slow motion,

like resin seeping from a Pine,

like I, thinking of you

in this utter nighttime silence.