agate

i long to be wholly certain, just to be certain of how we all will thrive, just to be certain of a beautiful tomorrow with electric skies. certain of near-limitless energy within us: that we nudge cherry trees into bloom and fruit, that we heave the sun and moon into their places, that we chart the exact trajectories of our parts meting out and merging into a certain whole.

how does imperfect information build certainty? through tacit models or conceptual knowledges? as stepladders for real beliefs or true feelings? using fictionalized observations or keen histories? on a dais of well-considered entropy or absolute order? i’d sooner split atoms with my lashes knit shut than to be wholly certain that a fading map’s creases are riverbeds, cherry orchards or gravel roads.

we are told, “here is one hand and here is another”: certain truth that the external world must exist. hands can hold fists and other hands back, inside and together. but what exists outside the hands? inside them lies a potential to fracture reality. tunneling through us as breaking waves on strings, fusing our bodies while splitting our cores: a holy certain stone rending the cherry in two.

stalks not yet knee high, i shift through your brace roots, making
feathery steps in an alien, windswept field.
crop unready for market, gusts dare shatter
a future before certain maturity.
singing, i close my eyes and listen –

distant crackles among efflorescent, long purple
tassels, silently weeping their unseen pollen.
silk chatters its sweet odors of sanctity:
stigmatic pilgrims demanding holy
communion and metaxenia.

let your new tillers flourish, superstitions be damned;
let them steady you to high season. soft tendrils
vining upon you find your nodes a staircase.
let my leaflets climb your shivering length,
longing for reach behind your sweet ears.

we turn off the side street in slippery silence. perspiration pools at the back of my knees, rendering the languor of the august night corpulent with promise. i sigh furtively as we approach the intercontinental, towering above us from our south. i hear the friezes along its eighth floor come to life as our steps grew louder. the north side awakens first, priest intoning an incantation towards the heavens upon an otherwise unlistening city. the white bull moans its hoarse, final breath in sacrifice, looking at me pleadingly eye to eye, voice speaking to me in a language both ancient and familiar. i know, unexpectedly, that the bull was asking me if i was ready for this moment. the blood drained from its limestone-hued body, crimson liquid awaiting mixture with grapes and earth to consecrate the ground on which we stand. there are times when you know that you are ready, and this is one when i am deeply not.

we glide down the mile, pedicabs nipping our heels, our pace quickening as the building came into view. i sense my pulse between the joints of my fingers grow faint and unpredictable as i look upward again. streetlights turn into a plurality of diffuse nebulae rotating around me, each containing their own uncertain future: transformative auroras, star death, galactic collisions, all approaching at speeds impossible to ascertain through blueshift. the magistrates and architect in the western frieze awaken this time and study this change in my perception, the ruler slumbering yet always awaiting their counsel. the guards on twelve hold their swords at the ready, resting their their thick beards on the pommels, observing both of our movements: yours with cool grace, mine with clumsy eagerness and utter confusion.

the revolving door of the lobby notices my hesitation and proves reticent to welcome me. you gasp as you titter while ignoring its deep stubbornness, choosing to grease its flanking portals with limpid praise. they unfurl themselves open at your touch and remain ajar for me, patiently gesturing in the bull’s language out of time. you already know that we both belong inside. sky at my back, the doors nudge me inward, trying to explain that i belong here, too. i am so afraid of losing my bearings that i close my eyes and count the steps past the threshold, listening for the echoes of your footfall across the mosaic. you pull your hands to my head, turning it upward when we stop and whispering that this is what you wanted to show me. your fingers explode with luminosity across my brow and temple. i can feel myself collapsing within the lobby.

we ease ourselves onto the mosaic in the atrium, which radiates its coolness into our hips. my eyes finally open and trudge their way upward, using cool black, ultramarine, and azure as footholds as we ascend to its uranian blueness. the dome above us both sends us messages in impenetrable symbologies expressed as faint twinkles we struggle to even see. as our vision adjusts, the false sky’s messages become recognizable. they are same as those of the heavens just past the doors, but sent faster than light. as they pass through the atrium’s vacuum, we realize they are tuned to our bodies' resonant frequencies. we begin to vibrate, stammering these missives to each other in the tongue of the bull and the doors. we are no longer just here: we are the medium for messages between our future selves. we lie back, held in position by the gravity of our intersecting arms, reciting the name of each constellation we see in and out of time.

an asking for, not of a deference to, not from a conquered heap of, well, what we imagine inside, our hands clasped, slick with ambiguity, or was i, ready to leave, an amen on your doorstep, a fear of the word, a fear of god, oh, a want of that fear, to flood your doorstep, fear on fear, on fear, on fear, of the flood itself, a word, of us, afraid of us, enfeared and fired and aflame, a slow fire of fearing, a word aflame, a flame worded, a doorstep darkened, our flood is laden with fire words, and fears to enflame.

we are in a land of stately pinks erupting pyroclastic, the stateless continent of a sooty god. but we, ourselves, are born of the steam: flame meeting surf, a violent expansion rather than a subtle extinguishment.

you are sitting at a piano, poor posture and all, playing a monochromatic nocturne. you chortle because whoever would put a piano next to a bathroom. you close the lid, and set the wood alight. the strings start to snap.

our skin sings for its supper. there are many mouths to be fed and i have never hosted a banquet. you tell me that there is a campfire on the riverbank, and there are many fish to cut, scale, and cook.

i am in the kitchen making you breakfast and i am also in the store buying sorbet on the hottest day of the year. we are in the jungle, again. you are busy making ice from fire and all i can dream of is freezing to death.

you sing a refrain: going anywhere but where we are. you say: play whatever pleases us as long as we can. hammers fall into each other and i cannot sing along. the stove clacks as the kettle intones that it’s the end of the shift.

the keys melt into each other. the river is dirty and you want to push the piano in it. it starts collapsing. my breast fills with a chorus. i grab matches, a canteen, and fifty dollars. the rime around me breaks in the sticky air.

burlap around legs and heat and, you can’t find enough hot water here. there are four or five needles that are to be applied over, and over, and over, into an interlocking to gasp out a breathless not. a gust rails the lonesomeward towards the four or five needles. there is a patch at the base of your neck awaiting a signal. your hand on a stopwatch, hearing the clack of needles and the clack of relays.

pantograph rising into to contact, three, or four clacks: the shoe, felt and feeling, not on the bogie. stop looking down when i talk to you, you: oh, a double you — a mirror you, staring back at yourself. you put the needle into the mirror and it reaches the double you. you have three or four needles left and there are no longer any pages in your book of sorts. a needle to the chin finds its home yet you still commute the long way.

a hussle and a lye for her needle and your thimble. a thumb below your orbit tracing a path at grade. a severe and several series of papercuts on your palm weep for the approach release. a pause at the junction, a needle out the windle, gone for good. are there two or three left, she asks? your yellow blinks twice, but you can’t recall how the fibers began to lock together. a whistle and an overheated bearing exhausted the future.

a hand inside the ceaseless stitching can feel and be felt. flanks bear the seas and ohs as you approach the manse. there is not enough space to fit more needles and our fibers are too tight and locked. one needle gets stuck in a shoe and another brakes the air of continuity. you swore there was one more and there must be a world in which you wooled. a fiber whistles and a patch at the base of your neck becomes unravelled.

terror strikes in the slow afternoon of escape: a tide of mordancy lapping at my toes, a stitch in my ribs leaving me gored and trembling. there are clamors of oranging poppies everywhere i’m trying to cling to. this escape might be the last in the way that each of them might have been. we found each other at one of those times: in a wave of terror to be caught and surfed with abandon.

half-expecting to be caught up in your horns i bobbed along the surface, not adrift, but saving my energy. the purpling lights told a different story: soft focus, gentle reveal, no jumpcuts, even as i lay spatchcocked and dreaming of how i feel when i see the poppies, the ones you told me you didn’t know about. i swore to you they’re everywhere here, a cup of gold running over.

something breaks the fog of the afternoon’s motion sickness: there’s a mist of longing rolling in from the hills, a regal light on the horizon, and the smell of trust in the air. we feel ourselves heading back towards the hills. yellow pansies stellate the grasslands between the poppies, ready to be consumed by hungry larvae, your smile ringing like shrill dinner bell in the grass.

a pair of trembling eyes, tracing shadows cast from blank referents quivering and interpreting through dust-filled, thin, curious tears expecting moldering blueprints.

watching me watching you, the lamp off: you won’t talk about the lines, any of them, who drew them, their vanishing points, perspectives, or how they were drawn on your arms.

during our uncertain twilight my small red eyes interlacing the blue lines, observing the nodes emerging as nests of loose ends and umbral morse telegraphy.

beyond dots and hazy shadows i know the world ends at sunrise. possibilities flourish: in the violet hour of want, an exploded drawing of desire and symbol lets us assemble.

her hands don’t wait for much these days, not even telephone calls: she skulks too slowly to merit even half the attention she used to receive. her eyes shift backwards, looking at a history in the air cordoned off from view, lit from minuscule recesses and warrens. she takes a breath that hangs heavy in the air: sighs built from volcanic ash and barely audible, sulphuric wails. a cough makes its way the edge of her parched tongue. she stifles it as much as she can, her unfiltered breaths precious and in demand. she looks deeper at the glistening corners and sees faces: her own, and those of her sisters, growing increasingly indistinct. a dry wind tickles her throat and the inside of her nostrils. keep listening, she thinks, they might hear you after all, above all this wind. three whistles blow and the faces go pale and out of focus, scattering like rats. rats, she thinks, they’ve eaten through my memories. the lights are no longer the memories, just phosphorescent vermin shit. a broom and dustpan tumble off the wall. they’re on the loose again, going through the boxes and eating through the glue. her synapses shudder and go dim as she flicks on the lights, which clatter into a milky glow. slivers of chewed cardboard, droppings, and torn papers lead into a spiral trail into the center of the room. the only way through is out.

she looks at her reflection and finds a pair of purple eyes sprouting from her shoulders. they look back at her demanding answers and attention. she imagines how she was pinned so effortlessly to the mattress: a butterfly on a mount with its thorax pierced. she thinks of her own thorax being pierced, divided into shards through sharp implements she can only feel, not see. her skin feels hot and demanding, and through her own senseless craving she opens her chest wall. unfolding her circulatory system, she waits, trembling with each pulse, red to purple to blue and back again. two bodies loom over her, watching and waiting to split the spoils that remain. they call her names: a senseless little slut, needy, unworthy of attention. she stares back, and hears her name. she feels bracketed by one’s arms as the other rends her flesh for sport. she can no longer see anything but a purple tear in the sky, trembling with her own pulse. she can no longer hear anything but her own name and her own respiration. they see her kicking, gasping, flopping like a fish fighting for its last breath. she feels still, at peace, adrift on a punt, staring at the tear in the sky. she eats cherries whole and dreams of a warm breeze in her hair. they continue feasting on her, tasting the warmth of bitter almond and sweet summer air. they begin to see what she sees: two, then three tears in the sky, ripening and intersecting into a larger whole.

two pulses ache under silk breast and breeze one mint-lime, lavender, burnt and teary another: heady musk-soaked tomatoes syncopate out of phase tender pulses: triple it, trip, pull it, ratamacue. oh, why me? why not you? two bald questions skipping beats, pulsing through ceaseless aching trembling tongues swollen thick with puce compote, together reveling, beating senseless soft patterns into skin, tendon, muscle.

a spilling beam splitting down my chest warming through me, a slitting prism. not a drop of inky watery gray today just unsullen blue amid wisp. i have more than enough so it spills from hearth to font to your open hands cupping to drink. our thirsts scrape and rattle in our two throats. hoarse and hoarser, we both need that drop of drink. i long to hear that rattle in your throat speak all the names i long to hear. i long to hear that scraping a song from the treetops and the leaves and the sticky backs of your hands. i long to hear your sticky hands get stuck in my fur and uproot my senses of self: impossibly tenacious, unsettling the ageless questions we thought not to ask. your hands are cooler now, still sticky with the mucilaginous sap from my inner rings. i long to hear my fur still clinging to those hands knowing not what to do or how to let go. three furtive glances become burrs in my side, looking for their next fertile fields: the swell of my stomach, tangles of ganglia, and the shady recesses of my gray matter. we both drink deep, your seedpods swelling between my vertebrae, working to break my back even further, to climb my spine in the name of reaching heaven.

an eye writes and writhes i/t-self. the pear an eye breaks in/to when it catches i/ts reflection in the mirror. the pear an eye-pear unst/i/tched in/to when be/held by another eye, another ewe. no matter what the wether. wether an eye is now a ewe is not a question for you to flock in/to. there is only ewe and eye not a ram in this world. eye be/holding ewe. no matter what the wether or what ewe in/to. a pear of ewe can i/t-self st/i/tch an eye-pear back in/to one eye. an eye may try to st/i/tch a pear of ewe in/to one ewe, but must be st/i/tched i/t-self first. no matter what eye am in/to. no matter what ewe are in/to. no matter wether ewe and eye are in/to eye and ewe. no matter we are no longer an eye-pear and ewe-pear.

taken aback that cherry blossoms were still there. tree upon tree, bough upon bough. i remember when the slightest raindrop, like a cartoon tear, could rattle them down, clinging to damp pavement. monotone sky saying: oh no, it is not your time yet. sickly sweet perfume; too sweet, like you, someone says. i am but here for a short time and so are all of us. i want to smash that monotone sky into a thousand shards.

i went to the park and all the cherry trees sang your praises. fluttering slow petals, shaken loose by breezes. one fell at my feet, another on my head. why must i bathe in petals, i muttered to no one. oh, no, it is not my time yet. more and more were falling and more and more clung to me. an unfamiliar warm body. bathe me in the petals, the slow snowfall of pink and white, a watermelon snow, cloaking the heart, as it pumps white and pink just for show.

the petals bathe the slow machine of the body. some of us are the machines that say: oh, no, it is not your time yet. some of us are the machines that say: keep quiet and relax. these machines cannot fix one another; the machines cannot fix a lack, only repeating their ceaseless message in a system of messages. pay attention to it.

pay attention to that wood in that world of the would, the wood of the mature cherry orchard. unword that would with a must: the musk of work to let the blooms fall where they may. separate the juice from fruit and pit from skin. oh, no, it is not my time yet. the wine is too young, it must age and rest. let a must lie on lees in a barrel of would. may might be just around the corner.

without sleep i dream of pressing a body hard against a wall bathed in pattern and light, the color of butter from normandy. the wall stable but chandeliers shake, furnishings rattle, frames and crosses sway on taut, thin wires. my heart stable like the wall, separating inside from outside, protecting the wires and nerves, the murmuring pipes and arteries and veins, the framing and bones. there is a whole other body among the chambers of my heart, pacing uncertain and wet with supple anguish. without sleep i dream of pressing that body against and through the walls of my heart, a hand in the ventricle, a tongue in the atrium, back of neck and base of head pressing. harder, no, harder still, i mean actually harder, seven out of ten on against the mural on the endocardium. the wall stable like my heart: alive with enough pulse and flex, obscuring the bodies and hearts within, pumping burgundy, staining blackberry, les mûres mûrs, spilling puce, a tea-rose uncertainty. without sleep i dream of the wall pressing back, enveloping my heart and the heart in the body, housing we two in its own four chambers, oxygenating and enrobing the bodies, mine, yours, in vermillion, in tyrian, the color of royalties, o, murex. i dream of the body pressing back, contusing, straining the harvest, yielding broken fruit, quashing unexpected wanting. without sleep i dream there is no room for absence here, only bowls of ripe blackberries, only space to press flesh to bramble, to snag skin on thorn, to hook that body, your body, any body, no body, no, your body, onto the wall for a while. to put a soul out to pasture, to have a heart earn its stripes, to be flailed with the canes, to leave the torus among the drupelets, to keep an obelisk inside the heart, to promise the stem inside the berry, no, no stem, just a placeholder. without sleep, i dream, i dream of a four chambered apartment, a blood-red wall, a purple tapestry, of nailheads and rivets being and in the hands of the experienced forager, of two occupants wildcrafting one another, of two dreamers, dreaming, with sleep, without sleep, with still bodies and stiller walls.

a
  blossoming  
             coyheart
  deman ding
a
  murmer ing  
             narcisse
  daw dli ng
a 
  wayfinding
             youwhile
  collapsing
a
  lipquaking
             halfgrin
  speedingto
a

i bear stares: a hundred.  

a retreat into the woods,  
a fougère hangs on linen.  

blues and greens have all  
of it figured out despite  
the coppery interferences

and an empty breath hangs  
fire about a needy repose

since an answer is known.