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.
