It doesn’t matter whether
it’s a spell or a poem,
these things we scatter across
the roads that run around
our minds left there
where the branch is broken,
the windshield’s feathered
impact site, a plume of steam,
a stack of stones, shapes spent
within this witness, branches
tied in squares or triangles,
a circle of salt or soot.
The hawk that watches
through your window,
the whiskey soaked oath.
It’s magic that you make
just being you right now.
It’s never been about me,
the litany of the undertow
a literature of the outsides
the scheming between skins,
a story worried away in scrapes and
whittlings, this voice of wounds wormed
through the earth, this want for
words and reason. It isn’t as if
I knew, unaware as I am of
the endless implications,
how it seems or sounds,
my laden tongue and untuned
ear wearying the world away.
Each day the grave I’m digging
an emptying of eulogies
imagined, artless and alone,
as the world picks these bones.
Down to the dregs
at the muddy bottom of
the bandwidth, down
this narrow passage between
streets and intersections,
water birds above the tree line
some bright reminder how
the sky gets to be that blue,
kingfisher and egret, a sheen of
green, a sweep of white,
these reminders of the transitive
nature of the map, the signal
sent symbol to symbol,
a poem you live to witness
more or less, until
the last star is fit to fall.
Plant yourself against the earth,
push your eyes deep into the sky.
It has been Friday forever—
bits and pieces chewed,
the unity of bark and bite
your blocking upon the boards,
cast by feckless fate and
archetype (the role your costume fit).
It has been winter so long
your branches bow,
the cold weight of your crown
coming down, the heavy curtains and
the flats on the fly—
in doubt and sorrow and fury
you play your part. More’s the pity,
such is life, aiming for the cheap seats
your voice fills your boot and
your back, strong from your belly,
unfurling from your spine,
the thunder you have wrung
stem to stern, bellows to
the burn, spat lightning and
eaten scenery, sad to have at last
gotten a laugh after learning
dying is so much harder.
It’s so much older than
any familiar skin,
down to rot and roots,
the great temple of the ancestors,
peanuts not withstanding,
this iron this spark this offering,
first tellings and ritual
reboots, patterns placed
deep within our cells,
knots tied in thick sequences,
the plodding sense of destiny
worked thoroughly from flesh to
recipe, old spells
spoken close to the tethers
the bristle of the spark
the binding to the wish
I carry a framework
whim and will inseparable
towards the tide
they oblige on the old form
abandoning fields to
the forest, depths
unbound from root to reach,
this burning below
unseen stars, these bones
around the fire.
The contents of my pockets
besides my greedy paws and you.
