Each Day it Mattered More

1

not knowing where when or how these things come together
you pray as only a child could
with cosmic gravity
as waves pray to the shore

a human knows that when too far ventured
without his harnesses, his mother-metal
he would shade into purple-green-black
and become a thing

when man left earth he was
uncomfortable
looking at the stars
as a reptile grows a second skin and itches inside it

on the corner where cars trade swipes
under the talcum light of bottle shop signs
a similar itch follows me

things that make me comfortable enough to sleep:
men and their flat bodies against my back
trips to the corner grocer
the false advertising of to-do lists

uneasy words to get at cracks
that words aren’t designed to reach
and must be bent like coat hangers

2

for example
the word beauty is bowl shaped
it waits for something
needs something
is passed around
when light and water fill it
they become discs, closed loops
only metonyms for some greater element

your eyelids are bowl shaped
when they cover you
and when open, sun-filled eyes
are lighter, hollow, cringing.
the drop of space between cornea
and pupil, lit like glass
iris revealing a truer texture, with millimeters of depth
something you could touch if you tore it apart

3

one night in a sudden waking moment
that fantasy had returned
that brilliant universe
like a missed appointment
it sat there dark and smiling, a bit superior
me in a panic saying “wait!”

I wanted to tell someone
and I couldn’t hide that wish, so it retreated
a slip of wing, and then nothing
left me with the slowly lifting sensation of minor gods
and colors without names

4

love and conflict are actuarial opposites
in love, put as little skin in the game as it takes
to keep you there — in war, put every inch
in love, fear is an asset — in war, a liability

I don’t know which this is
the fight to love
to be allowed to love
a place — with no second skin

people who love each other
feel they can pull down the stars and the mountains
just to participate in the impossible
if we could only pull down the stars for ourselves
we would be
both monstrous and deific
a new pantheon of petty children

5

I will be as empty as they come,
as strange as strangers go
I will do
anything they ask

maybe the right choice of words
maybe the right course of action
will save you
you are a protolith
I am metamorphic
both of us stuck in the stone

but kick for shore, kick kick
death is no conclusion
and the manner of death is no summary
but living death is all of these things