green
Us
Our coming together was irrational and vivid.
An expanding universe. Now there’s only a faint rumble and hiss all that’s left of the first light and heat.
I want to tell everything. Glittering points on our faces in summer sun. Metallic green beetle with frantic legs. Photos with conventional compositions disrupted. Wanting so badly to sing to you.
Now
Tread light. Don’t leave a mark.
Desperate to be original. Ruthlessly cutting quotations, allusions.
A borrowing I cut out earlier. No, first the original. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, 1936:
“In Nora’s heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her identity, and about it for its maintenance ran Nora’s blood.”
And then the borrow, half conscious - half accident:
I thought you left a fossil trace hardening, an arrhythmia on my heart.
An old man near my work seen most mornings: Is this my
mountain my pilgrimage
now? Supported
on granddaughters now
each side. Lifting
whole weight
each foot
I don’t know how to put down.
Feel
New. The old things still here but not pain.
Sex makes me tongueless, throat dry, heartbeat and breathing like wind-shook fur. Legs curled up under you. Slight. Slight and strong. You make my muscles want to crawl out of my skin and lounge to your fingers like sleeping cats.
Mouth must.
Mouth to eat and to breathe.
Mouth to kiss - to climb into and to devour the lover. To give them your breath, to steal the qualities you admire in them - on your tongue like strange teeth. I like to breathe face to face mouth barely touching. Eyes reaching hands, like each of you is falling equidistant forever falling away from the other but tumbling so close your foreheads almost knock, and afraid to look away or you’ll find you’re not falling and the sudden shock might kill you.
Mouth to speak. More falling to say love me I love you. To tell your fears that don’t have shape, in your lizard brain and vestigial tail. To tell the things you don’t understand. A scientist a mathematician can tell reasons where I’m grunts and wonder and physical sensation. But when something they simply can’t see frightens the dog in their ribcage I can show them shapes and light.
Mouth must. Mouth brings us together.
Our coming together was irrational and vivid.
An expanding universe. Now there’s only a faint rumble and hiss all that’s left of the first light and heat.
I want to tell everything. Glittering points on our faces in summer sun. Metallic green beetle with frantic legs. Photos with conventional compositions disrupted. Wanting so badly to sing to you.
Now
Tread light. Don’t leave a mark.
Desperate to be original. Ruthlessly cutting quotations, allusions.
A borrowing I cut out earlier. No, first the original. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, 1936:
“In Nora’s heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her identity, and about it for its maintenance ran Nora’s blood.”
And then the borrow, half conscious - half accident:
I thought you left a fossil trace hardening, an arrhythmia on my heart.
An old man near my work seen most mornings: Is this my
mountain my pilgrimage
now? Supported
on granddaughters now
each side. Lifting
whole weight
each foot
I don’t know how to put down.
Feel
New. The old things still here but not pain.
Sex makes me tongueless, throat dry, heartbeat and breathing like wind-shook fur. Legs curled up under you. Slight. Slight and strong. You make my muscles want to crawl out of my skin and lounge to your fingers like sleeping cats.
Mouth must.
Mouth to eat and to breathe.
Mouth to kiss - to climb into and to devour the lover. To give them your breath, to steal the qualities you admire in them - on your tongue like strange teeth. I like to breathe face to face mouth barely touching. Eyes reaching hands, like each of you is falling equidistant forever falling away from the other but tumbling so close your foreheads almost knock, and afraid to look away or you’ll find you’re not falling and the sudden shock might kill you.
Mouth to speak. More falling to say love me I love you. To tell your fears that don’t have shape, in your lizard brain and vestigial tail. To tell the things you don’t understand. A scientist a mathematician can tell reasons where I’m grunts and wonder and physical sensation. But when something they simply can’t see frightens the dog in their ribcage I can show them shapes and light.
Mouth must. Mouth brings us together.
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