What’s at the center of all things?
Wouldn’t you like to tip your gourd
over the side and see?
But first, you have to be with me.
Your reflection in the slicking oil
might make you full,
half and half,
touching noses
(feel the surface tension).
But you were never empty to begin with.
Melody is
Crackling honey,
scratching, shaving.
Minute friction.
Atoms to atmosphere.
Melodies are grains of sand.
Murmurations
dancing down dunes a mile high
to settle around you
in flocks of glowing gold.
They beset the smooth ground
and tickle you from below
in their own way.
Melody is a rock in the rapids,
slick and indignant.
Arch your feet with the stone.
Find it
lovingly precarious.
I can hear them,
sweeping skin,
soles sticking.
The tile betrays them.
Then they aren’t quiet,
just slow.
Stuttering groans
slice through buffering blades.
My eyes see static slate,
then nothing as my nose tents linen.
I can’t.
Move?
Sounds of closing,
sour heat overhead,
straight from my mind to my bed.
The wood is melting,
rings of roasted foam cascading a caramel beach.
Now the wood is singing.
How it soaks in layered bisques.
How gusts of the hand
strike the strings and stir the waves.
Rhythmic disturbances,
like pumping of veins that wrap the frame.
That’s pretty good.
You ought to give it a name.
What I remember
is being a crumpled bicycle
laying on my joints.
Can we spin like those wheels?
I want to learn the steps.
How many times must I lay here,
nauseous and flat?
It’s the pattern on these ceilings;
it’s walking with your head down.
It’s time to take note.
It’s time to take care.
It’s time to climb aboard; it’s sitting right there.
To slide into a booth so welcoming I could cry.
To catch lily pads as they unfurl with my bulbous eye
and hop to them.
Peace is still peace, though it bobs and spins.
If I decline,
keep legs underneath,
there will be a next time.
That's my belief.
I’ve been taken down stairs as numerous as my DNA,
the spirals tight as a rope’s weave.
Out of sight is where eyes can glint brightest.
They foretold of me
and what I will find there;
I wish I could hear it from you.
How far these drops have come
to land on me,
terminal and unexpected,
carrying taunts.
I’ve looked up until it pains my spine,
trying to sense them
before they disintegrate on my skin.
