Last night, I laughed at a poetry reading.
I had red wine in a thin plastic cup. I said cya!
and walked home during a surprisingly warm
night in the early spring of Hell.
                The trees,
still leafless and upon my walk
I heard the sound of a bird I had never heard
before. There I was staring up at the trees
in the dark listening to a sound
that had no place. I couldn’t place it. I never have.
I love this sound.

The placelessness of the sound.

The placelessness of the sound.

   Nondescript. Disembodied. Untranslatable.
   Provocative. Iridescent. Irrational.
   Stewing. Anarchic. Reverberating. Exquisite.
   Arduous. Arduous, yes. Collaborative. Cool.
   Cool . . .

It sounded exactly like a bird. It sounded like it knew
what it was doing, what it wanted, what it could
want, and it didn’t follow me anywhere.

Years can pass by as if nothing ever happened.

I am reminded of this often.

There is a woman who feeds a small lamb from her palm.
The entirety of the world behind her is gold
and seamless. Meaning it doesn’t seem, it just is.
When she turns her head towards mine to speak,
we nearly kiss if only because we’re close
and incredibly alone. We go on for some time.

As a day becomes an eternal blip, we stand. We
stretch into each other’s bodies—brushing
up against these impersonal exteriors. The lamb
runs off through fires, unscathed. I follow the woman
into the golden abyss. We never come out.

It is here that I’m writing from,
my seat of sweet alchemy. The flames of Hell
burning holes in any argumentative integrity. It’s unclear
the point of such lines; I guess I find grace in opacity.
I a child & thou a lamb. The cosmos reverberate.
I a child & thou a lamb! There are those that are,
there are those that could be, and I am stuck
between the two searching, enjoying the search,
singing about the search. It’s not ontological,
I’m exclaiming now, it’s more simple. It’s from
the dirt, the point, the point:
William: you must write, the voice of the dead is on fire.