Cloud Study

                             I.

Things were clearing up. Clouds
             parting their bandaged etcetera. The antelope
felt at ease with demise, peaceful
             shudders, distracted by middling breezes
off the dotted backs of speechless beetles
             rustling in the tall grass              unseen, grazing
beneath sightline, perhaps tipping the verso, where
             land is tucked, temporarily. Rarely clear-cut,
how pure description of the horizon
             is never what was meant, nor needed. An unfair
demand like deliverance.




















                             II.

A painter sketches deadly
             spiders freehand in honey and ash. You are
too much an oceanic demon, he says: here
             is money for a dress you should burn
immediately. Such are rose quartz
             saplings bordering the kingdoms
of the dead. An outline to backlight
             feeding from the fire pit, guitars strumming.
Life steps winded into the uncut field. I stay
             here to talk, to insist you listen.












                             III.

             A tired army rules
my mind and robs the sky its battleship
             joys. We know one thing is often said
in place of another. A projection: so, there I was,
             how about a drink on the corner? What of
sentences spoken by two distinct figures? Who
             composed these bright stars confused by constant
slurs—I vowed to keep the snow
             as simple as possible and I vowed to know
ditches, grasshoppers, other pale escapees
             from some nice afternoons at the pool.












                             IV.

Yet the empire of original order spells out:
             true freedom is a forgotten archive, a stripped
hard drive. How names are taken to the mountain,
             planted for feedback and covered in kudzu. How
to get it through your thick sleep that tomorrow’s
             an avalanche with wooden teeth. How yesterday’s
a shabby umbrella hiding a two-foot dagger
             and invisible fishing twine. Forgiveness for all
my thinking in lacquered gold bricks. Forgiveness
             for the galaxies I sold to buy syrup at the airport.
But why not me?
             I have been skying lately. The wondering persists.












                             V.

Why not black olives or wisdom
             in a deep red apricot’s pit? Will I now fall from on high
into a body of eggshells softly enough to know
             that beginning has no rest? Let my somnambulant
strata be motherless children raking coals. Let me
             disintegrate from desire all sacred music for whatever
birth is still possible. Whatever wounds I cite
             are deflowered infernos whose frozen robotic sisters
stopped speaking when their soil-filled mouths grew
             a succulent forest and I shrank small enough to inhabit
that mangrove and built an immanent empire, an irregular
             start, a pale green flicker. Burning jade and aloof, do you smell
the wet lions asleep in these ruins?












                             VI.

I pray for benevolent codes to drop
             treaties anonymously from the chariot. The sun
got haughty, she was listening, she burnt the city.
                                          The sun is god.
Then it rained. It rained and rained. I’m sorry.
             I didn’t come to make an easy paste
of pabulums, ready to fit in your wallet, or to
             speak only of flowers, though they grow
through the smoke rising
             from the ship’s hull. My body strapped
to the mast. Beauty has no instructions, only warnings.
             There’s no order but obviously a grammar
of plainspoken winter hurricanes. I am not a
             cerulean moth mating with a box of thumbtacks
but I am other parts rejoined, held
             in mylar. What interrogations, what flag
scraps I found in the anthemic bone
             fragments at your feet.












                             VII.

Tell me you are not
             rattled, are not sore. My heart, my obvious
errors hatched across the map are living,
             nameless streams, leading wax
ballerinas into a stained-glass empire
             of howling bronze dogs—I am
a visitor here, but so are you,
             attempting to make something appear.
Apparently. To stay.