i.

This world is the fusion of

Shadow-bodies, point

Where possibility

No longer lives

Merges

In through the object
Revealing itself

As note unscrawled

As through

Invisible lettering,

Reflection of emptied being

Involution contained

Bottled in and out
Escaped smoke

Sucked back down
To call it ‘a necessary truth’, ‘an

Explanation’ is not even to see

This point that is disappearing,

Homogeneous, occupied
A sudden lack of direction
Waking on the world’s backside
Curve above the orbit
Gone cold
Reshadowed full globule,

Redoubled, a space falling into
A continual insistent

Way to reach
Down in the dark

ii

You are
all points joined from arc to arc
in the other

between them

not even the impassable space

of an arrow:

one uncrossed sub-world to another,

Charon, Lethe, Orpheus

pleas carried back

Penelope to Eurydice in

return an unreturn-

able, still.

Survival

is too small a word

for disconnection.

Time. This wait. This awaited.

On the backside bright

as eclipsed horizon

The blinding

ungazed at

Other.

(1)

“Through the floating permanence of the relative distances”

(G Bennett, Last Words, p41)

When is one word still enough? When is the iridescence irradiation? The path from here to here is… I cannot tell you, Eury, where the stopped chronometer will point (us), nor what messages this lopsided one way walkie talkie has left adrift in static. I fissure. I shift. I have returned to the edge of the edge then the gulf beyond that to call forth the void into under round which these cables-roads-tracks-wires rope and strangle. I grip you harder. If I hold, then snap, then the surface, that one, a canvas, reveals itself to be tactility. To be ground to dust or, grinding against me, pressed flat into the book to hold that still stilled and crumbling orange light blue flash the rails crack and clatter rattle retch in the braked squeal sparking the night of tunnels into installation, space, to be planets and galaxies, your breast an arc, curve and points. There is a wilderness of silence in you, or walls that would be me. I do hear the singing. Still on the stunned branches I wrap round you like a vine, tightening.

(2)

What will hold me back from the conflagration in the daffodils, Orph?

Forgot the safe word? worlds? This is what I meant by build it on an estuary, a bayfront beachfront rise to the occasion wave fronting these tropical airs that have just now reached the Transylvanian fog rolling in and upwards. Coney Island’s hot lips ’80s replays on the Top 10 Kasey Casem in loafers, leggings and jelly shoes—won’t catch me dead with my fingers glued to bubblelicious pink stainless steel seating on this rollicking rollercoaster. Painted white, it makes for a whitewashed story under Trocadero’s lions. She leapt, or was she pushed? Pulled from the scenic balcony staring out towards Eiffel’s tower? Unwinged, human flight’s too far for shallows, not drowned as Icarus, but crushed into limestone, body vaporized: rock shadow, stone-singed. SHHH—SHUSH now! He came before you into this dark. A lute. Fluted. Flouting fingernail grating down the chalkless blackboard. Messages never written, or left. I call down into the cup of the daffodil shaped like an old telephone line. Can you hear? Operator. Please connect. Me to. This is. An outgoing. Call. Line only. Is there someone else? On the other end? Listen. Songbird or sonic waves? Come into the night. Light glowing bright. Green. What other shade would I be? (His / her / my own) silhouette.

(3)

Inceptions or instant-soup packages, ‘twere I a culture found under you

This said this, a country which does not exist. Yet. A continent of mono and duo-syllabic names, flat stones lugged upstream. Temples, 3 eyes you congeal between fingertips, toes, read signs the stop, starbucks, second avenue and before things slip back to mouton cadet or boulevard haussmann, Athens or Thessoniki, slope under where I can be, Eury-, that man in waiting. Tailcoated or togaed. Meandering homewise, shuffling off this coil-like viper-skin along rue tiquetonne, schlept then schluffed a muffled meek metric me away. What does mortality serve? To be master of all creatures but you? Breast bitten wrist coil or cruel, I could not but love this denial. One sting. One suck. From open veins, scythed, scathed, empty a last tune out. Blast me back-forward to take a step, stumble, get up without seeing, certainly, not you. Nor any other.

(4)

Back in a flash, on the half shell, givin’ her a big, glossy-poser smile

Rock Hudson on the silver screen while “only the Phantom knows” bellows a baseline out the old 2-way am/fm. Take your pick, plucked nostalgic out past the 70’s, now pre-flight screened with baggied gels, liquids, creams. Caps to screw tight in case of pressure (pleasure) change encapsulate within more plastic (latex?). Orph, could I make you a doll, a Barbie replacement? She’d never settle for just any Ken, must be business tycoon or Pop American Icon Nouvelle Star Ac’ kind of pre-fab: test to hit the right notes, tale tuned. Don’t dawdle or doodle on the accent just south of the “t”, pretend a dwindling “h” happened between “ting” and “thing”. Object-ification is smooth surface, hallowed ground palming her breast. Pomegranate.  Palpitate(-d/-ing). Nope, you’d never make that mistake. After all, she’s got you by the balls.

(5)

Nothing more to do but whine.

Hand to trace-lace-bind, center stuff, staple, stroke. You’d known it was me, my folded grammar, tattletale forgotten, coat in the wind, wishing for a hopscotch match. There, where I cut back the years, say “go to pieces”. The patched bleedwork box left behind of yellows. I suppose, had I a forwarding address, past this advent calendar’s seasonal grating, I would have been lying in wait, lined up ahead, flagging the signless poledancer back down under us. Hold. Here. Your bones breaking, marrow-exposed syntactical errors. My voice in the foam, the phone, a pause—enfin—where might we meet? For what price, a plate, a platter onto which I give you over. Will she take care of you? He?  The ace, half-moon historical abstracts linger like smog in the acrid air. Can’t you taste it? Me? I know the direction this dart is heading.

(6)

Mist and air meet an undercover harp

Echo’s got the dropsy. Plum outta autofills, betcha she could take us all down with her, within her griffon, a guffaw—done pawin’ the playgirls, Orph?—I think this map’s upside down, towel-twisted, collapsed collage of the N the F the A line. What’s it going to take to break out the newfangled tram and run rampant along the 15th arrondissement? Seems a sham to gum up the gardens, picket the pot-hole fillers, sell the last shelf of books and call it a day. Don’t you think? The gals here, at your feet, are all-smiles. Fact-filled frills can’t get a ruffle out of this newlywed season’s strumpet spinsters. Bi-ped ghost chameleon, you are not, Orph, though I can’t play this game any other way. Hose down the mid-Manhattan madhatter hoopla, spin me on up towards Harlem: I want to go back to the old days—sycamore jazz and mint juleps, down home southern bells in glitzy chintz nightshifts, raffles or cakewalks along the local 4H fairs. Who’s gonna be a winner? Thought I meant you, Orph? Naw. Pick that fading image of a girl back up and see if someone hasn’t spotted Narcissus somewheresabouts. I think just a glance will do her (me) some good. Here, in my harp-sign-and-signal-less labyrinth, where are we wandering? Could be a rhetorical ring to pattern the trap not to speak to, see, know, pin the tail on. I got to wonderin’, what’s it like? to break?