“I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch…”
--leonard cohen

THE DAWNING TRUTHS ARRIVE WITH LOW VOICES

Find out who your scarf is and tie it to you.

Not the devil. He is never here.

Just me.

***
Everyone is already naked.

Everyone is already naked and we’re discussing who the real Helen of Troy is.

This is the only way we have to compare ourselves. Apples and oranges only go so far.

***
The dawning truths arrive with low voices. Off the Pacific like a bell. Rubies scuttling over a cube.

***
Everyone is always inside my heart.

This is not near as painful as it sounds.

***
Thick plots of wood. A scatterbrained forest. Notes on the ground and tapering candles under it.

The roots here are all fucked up.

Keep moving.

***
You know the secret of the whole wheat.

I am so hungry I could eat a window.

***
Soaped of their flesh, the carnivores lair around the floor, around of meaning, nothing in the flesh or contemplated. A waterwheel sound.

And then there were three.

No, we don’t want to whisper. But we don’t need to scream.

***
Doorlocks and communities, the hooped whistle of fast-talk. I want you to understand, so I will use my hands to tell you, I will use the semaphore of love to tell you everything is right, that the ore is right, the skeletons are sturdy and the atoms are compliant. No one disagrees with the kennel.

I will use my arms and everyone will think I am flying.

It’s not in my poetry to say.

This is poetry on your terms.

***
Can you help me pick all these marbles up? We don’t want to trip over them.

***
All the marbles have little worlds in them.

The better to see you with.

The better to show you prism suns and moons, prism satellites, prism shields of love and oceans of rubies.

***
I will use my hands to find you, to hold your head, and tell you exactly what I mean.

Our friends will think of the sign of the Open Heart.

I will defer to the sign of the Open Hand.

The open hand can do or mean anything.

***
The dawning truths arrive with low voices. Off the Pacific like tiny islands. Rubies scuttling over a cube. The cube rises, shakes off its exteriors, and the sides grow convex. Like a lens
everything is behind us.

***
Whorls of hair, the drain clogged with the charge of water.

The roots are not what’s important here.

Keep moving.

***
Picture of a man eating a sandwich, what’s that? Are you not paying your attention?

Even the plagiarist is on the right track. We are all on the same wavelength. We are all the one.

It might help you to know the picture of the man eating the sandwich is a bit of a white lie.

***
It doesn’t look like it from here, but all those boxes, all those boxes with the corrugated metal walls are big as trains. It’s a trick of the brain, the boat they’re on is huge, and we’re so very far away the boat itself doesn’t look large enough to carry all that freight.

Maybe our eyes are playing trick son us.

Maybe ou reyes are playintg rickso nus.

Our eyes ARE playing tricks on us.

***
The lotus pin, what am I to do with it?

Four by thread and three by line and two by slope, the only thing is one by consensus.

***
I have always thought the best things in life were completely invisible.

Thus the blind leading the blind.

***
An inkling of the weight of the pack, the horse on the two-pronged crown.

The circle is baked into the wall. Everyone knows how to dance to it.

Where the hell is all the dynamite?

***
Arm's distance the rock. Scissors on three pairs of books. All the cactus in the world and all the water you could drink, no one exclusive of the other.

Spontaneously and without choice, I arrive at the perfect angle to love you.

***
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

That's the real beauty of all of this.

***
The first rule of the animals is to eat. The second is the rule of procreation. The third is the nameless rule, the one that needs no name for anything.

When I look into your eyes, it is the third rule I grasp the best.

Just reciting your name makes me feel split in two, into god and animal. One part sings your praises, calls you by your name because your name's the only one it knows.

The other part calls you by no name because, quite frankly, you are everything.

***
The circle is baked into the wall.

Do you choose a name or my other hand?

***
Standing by the speaker, everything jams in your heart. You could learn to love someone that way. Really. Shaking your heart into submission. But that’s not how it works, is it?

Tell me it’s more than vibration and hum.

***
Listen to all the cicadas. Can you believe that? All those invisible sounds mangling the air like electricity, burning sounds, the crackle and echo of the cicada legs on cactus, on dynamite, on corroded agate, on burnt feet.

Where’s you get all the dynamite?

Spontaneously and without control, I love you.

***
Oh, it’s more than that. The circle is baked into the wall.

That doesn’t make any sense.

How much would it take you to get it into the proper shape? You know, to whip it up a little bit?

You want to take a tanker?

No. What the fuck is that?

The circle is baked into the wall.

***
This is where I come in to tell you only the pretty girls know the whole wheat.

Find out who your scarf is and tie them to you.

From up here, looking down at my feet, I am a fucking mountain of made-up words. Swollen white heat. Rocksides pointing towards the sun and moon at their crookedest points upon the sky.

***
It’s no problem being open-minded. Just worry, really, about being open-hearted.

***
What’s this skin I’m in? Over the hum of the cicadas you’re the only thing I hear until the tree.

Whorled erections and there is never doubt.

Made-up swords. No in a silent movie, the lap of green bodied up to meet the rocksides.

If you touched it, what would you feel?

***
I am confident you’re on my radar: my arm is itching.

***
Has he told you about Life In Black?

No one talks about Life In Black anymore.

Shit. Crossing his arms, he’s getting there! He’s getting there! He’s going to give it up again! Starry nights! An armband of parental snot! Escutcheons of stars! A field made of a woman, the woman made of gooseflesh!

***
I can tell it’s morning. I can see the whites of your eyes.

***
A skull iris, they say.

I am confident you’re on my radar: my hands are itching.

***
Fence slats. Find out who your scarf is and tie them to you.

***
You’re burnt feet, Khufu. What are you trying to do?

Everyone is going to look at your rocksides and not know what to do with them. It’s like they’re there, and you can walk up the sides, I guess. You’d have to have your sticky shoes. What are you, some kind of spider?

You don’t even call them rocksides, and it doesn’t matter! No one’s looking at them the same way you are. You see all the insides. It’s all glitter to you. But you sure don’t have a clue about what we want to do with it.

***
Are your feet hot too?

Do you believe in my words at all?

They are only words.

***
I am confident you are on my radar: my fingertips are beginning to throb. I can feel each ridge and groove spill into the next one, and I know they are discrete, and I know that they are almost nothing, and I know they are mine.

Failing all of that, I would still give you my arm.

I promise.

***
Like a lens, everything is behind us.

Find out who your scarf is and tie it to you.

But you don’t have to be scared. It’s just a rockside. They’re supposed to be the color of fire.

Maybe not quite as hot, I guess.

I don’t know what they’re supposed to do either.

***
You have a thing on the back of your head. Now that you ask, it does look a little like blood. Life In Red everywhere, passion-style, ready for the proper ceremony. The proper foil. Do you have your cooking shoes?

***
I am confident you are on my radar: your scarf is tied to my scarf. At least I will never have an excuse to let you go myself.

All of this should be without control.

Let's keep all our accounts open.

***
Just reciting the circle's name, the circle is baked into the wall.

Follow bliss, for sure.

***
We'll stand by the rocksides and you can tell me about you, and I can tell you about me, and we'll admire all the past, and then we'll look up, the tops of the rocksides far, far away, and I'll tell you of the time I told you I was going to give you my arm, and every time I tell you I'll have the phantom itch.

I know me better than anyone.

I'd give you my arm anytime.

This is how we step back into the circle.
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Touching and feeling are among the best of both worlds.

Still deciding how many worlds there are. The answer is everything or nothing.

I feel words in the air in sparks I've never felt before. Everyone has them.

It is glorious when they all trickle out. Eventually, there's a flood to follow. The trees bloom, and we have more beauty to write about, more muses, more hugs, more love, and there's no room but to smile.

Love to all.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.