From Irrational Knowledge

(How does it die?)

desired word unbounded

asks questions never answered

weaving among lines surrendered

among shoulders

a spiral for melody, a spiral

water driven & phrased

“heart hard as leather”

a dream dreamed

not yet walked

out on: dearest climbers

of ivory towers

to put this song

gutter-down my sad face

galloping away, this world without you

is an impossibility, hoofed in an octave

strapped in the volta

it was a million to one

(What must it meet up with on the dissecting table for it to look beautiful?)

double crossed: two versions

shift of joint in the ball socket

a dove song on limbs

folded out on the table

a discarded, opened envelope

betrayed by fingerprints

smudges in the eye creases

across the sunset

orange splattered about the dark

no ticket stub to mark the occasion

in a that sky

it’s a long armed horizon

its slice of clouding

a curve where light comes

to be eye to eye

up to the crease

the crack where I break you

(With what two objects would one wish to see it in the desert?)

cyclical bands of light, a greenery

to remember I jot down this quiet

honeysuckle, the way ivory smells

or how your hair was collected

a paring down in the sloughing off of cells

ritually I bore you up

but under wing

I wanted to splice each gamete

each stylized stamen, pistil

whipped and lovely as locks

a castling where the moat is full

of dandelions

where the tea is half nettle

half collated fingernails

(On which spot of the nude body of a woman would you place it?)

shattered

shuttled sapphire

spored scaffolding::   sound/sound

speech supplicated          slivers

         sirens sized   

                         saw

                            skinned

silvered            sideways

scar

    shadow         she

    subtitled        she

      scattered        she

(And if the woman were sleeping?)

for tracey mctague

above in a state of dirty corners

swept up: this sad conclusion

yew trees clipped

the earth opened up to spit

cat claw roots

bulbs bigger than a baby’s head

an avocado tree of one yellow leaf

distracts me from the story

  outside of this geography

two warblers you were

crooning a tale of cross citied

distaste

I sat on a wire downwind & smelled

something burning

this triangle seems darker

but its little light is how we came

to belly up bar-faced in pits of oyster shell

it was all giggles, fat tips

and a balance of encrusted

exteriors

(And if she were dead?)

in the slendered perfect

arm bones, leg bones, a soup

of hands tilted, listening, tiny ear bones

clicking to aside

         to aisle

         to assemble

a row of thorns flowering beneath the breast

a row of cutlets firming in the sun

I cut out bandages from loose leaf

to spoon up blood

spun tendons round the joints

I flexed and fidgeted

the lights stayed dim

no inhale on the out take

no late dream before awake