See that—spring in mud

I’ve been floundering. The way streets
come together, uncountable,
askance. That’s seeing’s hand and seen.
Even with numbers
floating through texts,
presence evades catalogues.
Out there, the band of clouds
and sun healthier than the old
suit to which I pledged allegiance.
Some trees are green and others
tear off their underthings.

To February

No roaming, no kindness. So you come, discontent. Name me a suitor. Name me. Find my cracked hands, not unlonely, not discontented either. You’re arrival, and such a bore.

To keep plumbing, how exhausting. To find the cool ones, the gather, the backside of this. That unfrightened face, dull in half light. But we can truly shirk, scare the crows from trees.

I have the note, and it hides from you. All those shaking hands conspire. Nothing would find me so free. No street, no snow, no nailpolish, no database. We found spring once; we were grapple.

No found conversation, no mutual memory, even. But I have mine. Mesick, Mount Pleasant, Lafayette, Interlochen, Buffalo, Grand Rapids. The times lead to absence -- more loving than the paths we took. Or the jumbled shingles, repeated windchime note.

After Scene Changes / Waiting at Terminals

That cold code and direction, messy lip at trumpet. Every instance of try threatens. Edges fell, decisions and years. Cult of personality. Cult of brown swirled foam. Cult of narrative buried & pressed, the thin distorted images saying ‘ice made me’. Cult of self-control and vinegar rinses. Cult of waiting for results Cult of the young couples, throwbacks. Pockmarked in rollers w/ dog shit on slippers. If you never repeat, will you ever gain dimension. Remember the pink house & streeted slopes, drizzle with dinner & even in the warmth, confused fake snow.

Mirror:

Layered Obsidian: Thick trinkets or monied apology forgotten for heft and fit. Looking for a verb for the layers… inhabit? cling? Plume of smoke less plume-y, more jet-y, straight up, a tight funnel. Chair upturned in the snow along U.S. 131, ungoogleable. The night of the crows and nests, inhabitable plume. Unfinished, raw. The dead leaves hang like bare metal, a thing kept and forgotten. Making to find a ghosted layer, a colored lens to adopt, to remember. There we were, there. Rest areas and rust. Starts surrounding the vein, the hardest bit or most something. Structure & fill whatever we make of it, passing through. No rules but how to fall.

***

Layered Obsidian: Out of place, a narrow wooden bridge, limbs reaching at us, hood getting hot under sun, dust of road in our lungs, the way we hold our hands. She stands ankle deep, a clear slicing a talking that follows me in sleep. Layered obsidian on my desk, thick pines scattered, unpatterned. The just kept coming so fast, wanted a short nap, wanted to back up a little. Wind tosses shine outside our bedroom.

Mirror:

Cup: A swipe, a chance. Heap underfoot & promise, amounting to that. Hold rain or morning, but let it go, too.

***

Cup: Stripes wider than a thumb – earth following day, a fast streak, the falling of dew between our toes, music pressing our skin.

Mirror:

Rain: A place a decision is made with pockmarks in snow and glint of green in the magnolia. Holes in the curtains, letting in the anyway, like a porch or other screened-in area with essential oils and muscle ache from a bout, violent or ecstatic or other, rain you slight, other-kind scraping & bone-feel. Still don’t know what crows do in rain, or what we’d got, standing in the dams, caught. Damp encouraged bites & gnashing, sharpened the unpleasant way home along High. Beyond damp, the soaking, the turning just to the very things themselves under sheen & glisten, and what’s more – turning by coming from the sky, suddenly. Here’s the day wringing – it leaves us. The only remarkable thing, our readiness—you smiling like in a photo.

***

Rain: A rainy day means a movie, means grass the next day, pushing. A banjo without strings for thin slips of paper, dust grey toes and short shorts with stripes running down the side. A man in sunglasses looks down a twelve-year-old’s shirt. Sun on dirt and tank tops.

Circles Around Home

Lake said, the sound is the same; we
fingered western shores scattered from the shower head, showed
the girl in the bath to sing fish.
Here salty grows into ridge-moss,
hollow place. Elegy breaks in pink caves, tiny
pops at the surface, with pressure. Pleasure says,
it's windy, scatters in windows with baby shit and allowable think.

Mirror:

Honey: Such a clear notation, the back of a spoon—that shine, real real clean.

***

Honey: Wide river, fast edges spinning out into a woman’s hair in a fairy tale, thin pages between fingers. Small globe on her fingertips, painted tear and black thong underwear. An airplane, loud voice pushing ripples inward, the man next to her, his fat, clean hands. Waking up, a trailer in the woods, puppies in a shed out back, behind that nothing, behind that, woods, behind that everything, a slim creek dancing. Amber spread clean over silver, curved hollow – memory between twenty-year bones. We have caught this clear animal, these fluid muscles and veins. Held up roughly, loudly to yellow light, mixed shadows, angles & delicate-strong blankets, pointed edges, a thin layer of am.

Portrait of the Journey

It began by waving
goodbye to the girl at the south
end of Franklin,
her wand and incantations--
Extremes on my map
are inked in black; their refusals
stand for scraping removal. Solitude -
something like increases
along the real - looks
to swallow and birth, steaming
and purple.

The idea of repose a play, or a fake.
All the plans filter in around us,
clues to our own
attention. For all the pretending, all
I can see is dust. And if I decided
to relish it, I would. Of the many
dreams, I only understood the one where
we all jumped in. The near misses coalesce to
a life. If you intended, if you see the dings
in my revisions, I’ll continue, for a while
anyway.

Telescope

Last night crows
roosted, shuffled.
Sixteenth note, eighth,
sixteenth, in catalpas.

Apply any pronoun,
be wrong. Repetition
fails. Two pieces of black
music, absent
out the window.