I measure my faith
mapping
an imperative topography
through disquisition
tongues volatility
contesting end
but soon the lines began
intersecting—reaching
shorter distances until
they became
dots markers references
location— place—
as in: you are
here

Yet no image is decisive
as the fog moves in
and the creek rises
we have our own wounds
in this geography.  At nightfall,
I thought I heard sirens,
the wet streets
my abandoned city
speaking to me
babies contesting for mother’s milk
tongue—a classic love story
two desperate entities
talking in
nonsense rhyme

We have been here before
you and I—but now as day breaks
we are constantly changing I am
reminded of false closure
our best impulses disembodiment
speech through glass throats the light
rises suffering at its roots
opening a window entering your tongue
touching my tongue
tasting the space between words
dimly lit lips lunging
love smothers I am
your blank face
dismantled by clear-cut storytelling

There is a story
I never spoke about with you
come into this cold room closed consciousness a flat blackness
without recordable distances
I was you
earlier tonight a convenient and communicable form anything
to make end occupied
by the questions of light
the long annihilation of another
the procedural grammar of the supernatural
that unbroken thing
limited by the edge of the paper

The quietest and most intimate
grammar is left behind lyrical
disruption a fragmentary belief
shutting the finally struggled out
contemplating the convergence of old forms darkness the disconsolate and powerful
one modality transcending narrative synesthesia its occupant—a life
lived the beautiful
dwell as randomness speaks
the poet unobtrusive echoes
confused by prose
sound converted into image
the self-lunging throat

We have been made a brilliant beginning deception
the darkly autobiographical
ongoing mystery measuring your tongue and my tongue this intensely progressive labor:
we all inhabit we district—elastic surface: delighted
syncopated
a dense juxtaposition of life lived
partially cut open
intimately yelling—shaken vigorously
into writing into vision
the accidents of attention
the sound of falling alone in an open city
|

The collisions of unshackled tongues—bathe language bad mouthing the stutter: compulsively salivating
spasmodically aphonic—catastrophic love
a kiss and what more is there to say
than this:
I hesitated before undressing your hands
on my body followed the sound of birds wings trapped in a narrow chimney
the anticipation made you hold your throat and squeeze wanting to dissolve into noisy dreams far from here and they were here and for a moment uninterrupted constricted endlessly eroticizing ingestion