Skin is Unavoidable
It is winter and I bring you clothes.
Carry them in brown paper bags
worn loose like cotton. Tiny lints let go.
Saggy arms of sweaters and patched-up hats,
unfolded. I won't sell them.
Leave them on your sidewalk under lamps
and the slush drips. Somehow it is warm.
So they'll fold themselves in slush,
make a little mold garden company
before they get kicked onto melting ice.
Maybe you will recognize a sock, smile,
ask me, thank me?
Yes it's warm inside my elbows,
anyway the sacks are sweet,
giving clothes at night,
sloppy fire that I make. Still,
I need to feel newly skinned,
if not naked.
Trash send me one new tight red shirt
to stretch over my shell and three new potatoes.
I will boil off the soft worn brown skins
in hard tap water over my gas flame.
Soon we will eat something empty.
Awakening, Rainstorm
When your hands
which are your self
look unfamiliar in gray light
or in sun
or bed
then it must have been a rainstorm.
Dragging in its fall
all the animal refinements
of your fog and future plans,
darling quilts of skin
that cling
in worship of the things
they've done and held.
So wash away.
Obey.
Or if you like,
surrender.
Carry trails of sediment
in rain.
New, unknowably open spaces,
homes to serve the air,
would not meet
your old hands
without the blessing storm.
And your skin would not be stinging,
buzzing under
wet, perplexed eyes.
Other Riches
He brings me blankets folded into shapes
in the breakfast-time. I decipher
these sweet blobs all day,
cook new meals in winter
from the racing images I see.
He - then, and my food are brighter,
then I sing, standing up and he
hears a Thank You not to him
but to the sly hidden things,
free moving in the air, limb to limb
and sparks between, I thank the air which means
I thank the world which made a spark like him,
folding blankets for a gift that gleams,
the world, where any two things,
close enough, are more than two,
but not a tidy Three, but something new
and made of others, totally its own.
His Hands
His hands reach out for the corners of wind and he is covered
in shingles
made from oil, made himself.
Hard and rough, they deflect.
But they do invite me with their sparkles. Like fine mica in his skin.
I wear the dust of his shingles.
Of the dust I make my own,
plate thin shingles
on my arms and flash the armor back.
Underneath his nails
is a smell like tar.
He drives any distance for his food.
His enormous hands reach out for the sun. Feels its belly and
tightens his fingers around its moving legs.
I am molten lead.
I am the light on the side
of a brick and mortar building.
Bleeding, running smooth and liquid glue.
He is tall and grasping.
I am in between his hands.
My Worry
My worry is like dust
when I'm still
it collects and settles
coating
until I feel alldusty.
I'm running or
the wind is blowing
no worries, no worries, no
worry on me.
My dust is like my worry
here
again another window still
the dust so loud
I wake up at night
it's in my wrinkles
and under my arms
I must learn to toss and turn.
I look carefully.
I lie very still.
A Setting for Painting
Evening.
And plenty to drink.
And I drink slow
under the light
of a white lamp
where grain comes alive,
streching, celebrating
being dry.
I see slowly a crying thing,
blues serene
and green swallows;
nothing
ever's the same again.
Ocean
There is an ocean.
And I am treading in it.
Alright.
All neutral, this way
with the sea,
save for the soft, rolling gut
of infinity, with power
to push me
anywhere. |