more than this

What is this taste in my mouth? Today it's bile, but there's a higher layer too, the memory of coffee or cool dry pinenuts at midsummer. There's plenty of room under the bridges. Let's go capture all the tiny refractions from the river for an hour, and feed them--just so--to the first lovely strangers we meet. We bent toward the horizon, she and I, hoping to find union around or past the the wild skeins of language in the air between us. Interrupted only by the wonder of the immanence of these vigorous boys, we remembered together how we'd watched astronauts risen whole, themselves tiny moons.

Great clouds of diesel smoke wrote across my memories of her. Din and din, the clamor of young voices over the grind of the morning bus! Their bodies leapt and hands rumble through the reeking well-dieseled air. They excited us, these boys on their run into the heart of downtown, their tales of baby faced girls (hips angled, mouths puckered, voiced pitched, all just-so) and their cavaliers, jousting through the depth of the Middens. "Aww yeah, that was that was," he hollered, interruption upon interruption words drawn out exaggerated pulled like taffy through their endlessly revolving hands. "We was so draunk, we was runnin we was--" now the other one, "an we jook yeah we go to get that blunt anwe be--" now the third, "I was like walk faster walk faster til we runnin cuz summa them niggaz startin to recognize my face--" now the first, "it was all like 3 in the mornin an we be thonly ones out there nigga and that ainta good time for the niggaz" "thas what I say nigga, thas why I say we gots to walk faster" "cuz some niggaz startin to reckanize my face" "aww" But over all this, sharp like a cool drink she whispered through the clearing morning blue "I'm tired" and applied lipstick, eyeshadow, resisted the rocking of the bus, the collapsing pathways down to the place we'll drown where we'll fire up the bottom of the river, the ocean, the space black at the horizons and fill it just with our heartbeats to hammer at the other shore the other shore we'll drop like rocks until we kiss bottom

She filled the gulf between with mouthed dream particles, with stretches, moments against me, her breasts pooled there, my eyes unable to look up, my hands following like fishes on the line. She was orange, in her mouth. I remembered rolling aside, laying on my back a picture of the roof blown off, the sky positively booming with the light of stars, constellations risen with a KLANG and my Third Person traipsed away from me, down the Learned Highway. To her, of course. Always only her, past exits and plowed fields, divergent roads, ill-lit farmhouses, barely remembered valley and well-meandered streams. My stung heart pumped fire into my belly, a corona in my lungs, stars across my vocal chords! until I murmured mixed up nonsense, lyrics from lost songs invented and forgotten in the singing of them, voices in chorus "If I could take the fire out from the water/
I'd take you where nobody knows you/And nobody gives a damn/I said nobody knows you/and nobody gives a damn either way
About your blood/your bones/your voice/and ghost" almost done now i know he's thinking.

Kill them in our eyes, work loose their favorite teeth, their most loved dolls. i croon, pine over your seed, your memory of events to come, your thick lust for nostalgia, elegy in each orgasm. I forgot a moment about my promise when I left my beloved borderlands behind, cross those forgotten bridges and unravel the City of the Markets of the Dead. My arrow was dulled by the reddening of the leaves, the cooling of the air. I'd sworn I could do it, push it once in the throat and it would swallow, and all would be forgotten while it convulsed there. That voice then, "I smell you out there making you moves, settling your dry pale fingers over my mouth and abdomen." had I forgotten his goal? My promises spent in a trice, my answer to his question paid as a dividend of careening automobiles, sparkling lights, wistful mornings watching the sun rise over the river? I long to fix upon a clock, a known thing, a measured dram of evidence of the Prime Mover's meddling. But know it's only the bitter breaking tool of the Angry Men, their music in our heads in the wheels of their justice against us, tiny and focused upon me. I felt alive then, the memory of him and his fists, thrust as wards against the flood of my weaknesses, our shared face jutted forward fiercely. O we make more in utterances, "You alive but cold," than we ever did in touching. He, like the limbs of starflight, bursts of flame, silent contrails, impossible flight, looking amid the events as if seconds were trenches into which they poured our dead.

I want to leap forward ten thousand years past wrung out and sodden metaphors forward byond similies like well fought good fights and leveled playing fields. To forget my language of wars and sport and food and family to speak new:

We are lightning frozen in transparent soil. Our voice is midnight on fire with sweet fruit. We unify over our hearts bursting like tangles of colored thread! I am a body, my skin singing; I am a woman in flight! Come with me like the fall of rows of swift rooted water birds and light my mouth with your fingers, the music of your hairs in motion, the sound of kisses tolling on green glass. We gravely climb into a kaleidoscope of the sciences,a mystery like cords of wood sheltered from the rain. Good bye speech, goodbye. I sail you on the collapse of soggy time.


I think you know exactly what I mean, yes every word!
--
O star
divulge your children
like the bitter taste of rising air
mourn the explosion of law into black spinning heartache
Ambassadors break through the pale webbing of dawn at the opposite sides of the earth and bite wetly into the forbidden sundries of our knitted bones. We ran so quickly out of room between us and the great muscles of God.


---
and then music, in a flood through the hard brittle matter of my brain

i'm not big enough not big enough to own you to burn like the batwings around you and fold down over you
I'm not closing these doors anymore but opening them wide and getting out of sight behind the great thorny bush outside
o my only one my smoking golden one my fearless face your eyes unfolding like the fins of fish that climb outragously high from the bottom of the deep the wings of bright wasps black and gleaming
slip your sting inside me quite readily and stealthily please don't be forgetting how I'm not big on bloodletting not big enough not big enough at all


I'm going to claim now the power of our love and hook it up and light the pathway down to the place we'll drown where we'll fire up the ocean and fill it just with our heart beats to hammer at the other shore the other shore we'll drop like rocks until we kiss bottom
give me the whites of your eyes let me kiss you there in shining open air we'll drive our memory away away until they cannot touch your sweet blue mouth the puckered lips and all the forgotten rotten fish
come on come on break down the waves and let's dive in fly home to the bottom and soothe our aches come on come on let's pour our skins together and drown
grab the air with our fingers attack want victory with me you'll have it just ask we'll warm each other up just enough to dream of what we'd be if we lost
come on come on let's break down the waves and let's dive in fly home to the bottom and give up our skin for just enough memory to make new lives of it



I'm not known I'm not known I've got to grow
I cannot feel what I long to steal from your pretty ears your lovely fears the color in your skin
oh give me that hair
that secret stair
that falling star out the backdoor of your house
come into the yard
and stand there till we blister in the sunrise
stick dusty fingers in our eyes
knots of hunger in our stomachs
lack of knowing how the wind is blowing
we're not known
we're not known

I have not earned it but I'm going to reverse it
anyway
I have not earned it but I'm going to reverse it
anyway
anyway
anyway

You know, you remember how it went you remember how it ended or how it started to end ("All you know I know:") (we are all lightning and when we are all lightning there is no news) green leaves and whirling atoms a gulf of space between particles, the half distances between us the impact of my violence my confidential utterances.
make me water endlessly. One day I'll reflect nothing in that mirror, cross those forgotten bridges, the bowels of the City and push it from within, let it devour itself.

In cool morning light she found herself alone at the edge of an asphalt precipice. She'd calculated so many times the location, dripped black ink down her ledgers repeatedly until the numbers rang clear, that arrival at it was anticlimactic. There were supposed to be a dozen transmitters here, a kind of wild carnival of signals outpouring. She'd measured this one and that one, assured herself the repeaters she'd found all pointed here: a shallow basin of land northwest of Main and Main, west of the fountain square, undulant streets and byways, some unpaved and rutted; overgrown patches, vacant homes, stores boarded or simply empty- she was sure she'd seen tentacle vines creeping out the glass and tile storefronts in some places- or had passed a phantasm of a junkyard with thick green moss carpeting every car and rusted hulk, trash heaps, sandy mounds seeping oily residue as if some giant had dumped enormous piles of it to soak up oil that he'd spilled; a park, abandoned now, that someone had obviously tried to transform into a kind of farm, twisted tomato plants rampant upon a forgotten baseball diamond; angular blocks defined by gravel roads and ancient stucco houses or seemingly more ancient trailer homes, hollow windows agape, exhaling curtains into the breeze, flowers upon the carports. And at the head of these, this spot, the undeniable location of the transmitters. Except the precipice and the broad barren hole before her belied her math. She muttered momentarily, refigured a bit here and there, stared into the shadowed basin, squinting.

They grip memories yet to be marred. Walk forward so slowly but with a kind of mad joy in their faces, moving toward adventure. Morning rode down on me.

He bounce downhill, caromed down rocks and fingered his way through piles of broken brick. Eyes always on the long wall of the City of the Markets of the Dead, he hummed something like a prayer and longed to be with her in the presence of the third person: their figures silhouetted dramatically, heads bent close together muttering or embraced and wet with saliva, sweat, tears. His hold on each topmost cinderblock clenched and released clenched and released. He'd walked the northern perimeter, cleaved to the wall here and there, hoped to find a climbing place or gate. But the gates were south, or east. At them moved women and memories of women. Long fingers, black hair, swift red mouths and their flashes of teeth: his head ached at the memory of them! So he'd chosen to walk west, prayed some forgotten road had made it out to some forgotten gate, that he could flash through, push into the edge of the city, a tiny presence of contagion within the cell walls.

Of course something had gone through first. A sizable pile of dark timbers and faded bricks malingered at the far northwest corner of the wall. He might once have felt his heart skip at his fortune. Imagining himself an unlikely person of luck, he spit on the ground, at the rubble, onto the dusty surface of his hands. The ritual calmed him, and he breathed calmly as he picked his way through the wall at last, penetrating the City, an unwatched-for gamete of trouble, on his way south.

O City, your green will fade and we'll see through your trees at last and in your barrenness we will mourn your memory, our memory of you, my mindfull of wishes and heartbeats, skins of meadows, eyes like bricks and butterflies, the great release of air, an exhalation of my entire body. Lost!

I remember holding Kiki, unbroken smooth skin of his chest, sweet curve of her thighs, tousle of hair above—and of course the memory of those wings at her/his back, fading but true. Oh the feel of grass on our skin was the flavor of lemons, the texture of cake and a clean white memory of tart icing. O body. O taste of forgetting as you crumbled against my lips. I wanted to see him in that great meadow, naked but for his wings, hair lifted, a cloud of dandelions about him: the straightaway-stolen memories of 20 years of phantasies wrenched to life before me at last. I watched my hand at her shoulder, traced the curve of his/her spine and remembered forward this vision of him among the drone of bees, burst flowers, timely wind and tousled hair. But I hadn't remembered as clearly the forest that bordered that meadow, west and south.

There were birds, bitter wings careening against me (and the boys and one dangling body and one bite amid the great events). I stood alive; he--the wire ignored by his sweet eye-- hid with me, we broke together and fell into piles, barely-lewd thrusts in rusting heaps, bags of hay and dirt littered the ground at our feet.

We bent toward the horizon, watched astronauts risen whole, themselves tiny moons.

She filled the gulf between with mouthed dream particles, with stretches, moments against me. O we make more in utterances, "You alive but cold," than we ever did in touching. He, like the limbs of starflight, bursts of flame, silent contrails, impossible flight, looking amid the events as if seconds were trenches into which they poured our dead.

I squinted then in the light upon the dam, hungry for the black water, for more power, And then just remnants, a few into each ear, oscillations at mirrors, dark weeks months coffee mouth every atom shook.

"Ah! half cannot deny anyone-- all these, they make you cold cold"

She like burst limbs launched upon the bottom of the valley, the north wall, electrified by her eyes until it was like unto the sun. And if activity scaled the westward pieces, overgrown with great fronds, pushed back by the wind like a hand against a lover's kissing mouth denied. The valley then turns into an embrace of gold, riots of flowers. Bodegas hovered above this, shocked white stucco pinned down by the sun. No violence, neither anything willed nor confidential, prices like women's thighs, like a dropped stone.

She was orange, in her mouth. Great clouds of diesel smoke wrote across my memories of her. The Third Person traipsed away from me, down the Learned Highway to her, murmured mixed up nonsense, lyrics from lost songs invented and forgotten in the singing of them "a muzzle of bees/My sleeves have pushed/some say they're in between/I don't think they're in between/ the breeze blown through/On your machine/I'm assuming you are news"

We are all lightning and we branch, our skin fluid, but longing, longing! Everything spins, there are green leaves whirling at the clocks, actresses cowling, crossed moments concealing me. O! Pour me endlessly, unite me with them again! Make day a smudge, black grease on glass. I'm left imagining. I assented our beloved borderlands, forgotten in the Markets of the Dead. Food for the bowels of a City. O my beloved, I thought in light skimmed right off the surface of my skin, the liquor of sleep injected between the joints. What does he plan for a gift, what do we devour at the entrance of the vast steel culvert, our memories yet to be marred like the boys. I mourned a sound of echoed feet running on steel, forgotten with a kind of mad joy when our night together dissolved in a cup, a hum of thrusting groins.

The songs back again, never louder than a promise at her ear, "God lifts/ hums, your spine starts to shine/And you and I are climbing/we punch our holes in so much less/fall upward into the scattered broken sky/"

Until down on me, O City, your green life will crash at last and in your barrenness my mindfull of wishes and heartbeats, butterflies, the great release of air, simply turns around--

Metanoia! Yes! Given a timeline, we determined to caress the contours of the Market and name each forgotten woman in it, every sudden vision spawned there, all the gripping hands and questioning mouths and recruit... at least one other. Yes. I imagine my mouth on each of theirs in turn, warm and slick. "River river river have mercy," oh.


Kiki's voice then, resurrecting him to me, "I smell them out there making their moves, settling their dry pale fingers over my spoon and dropper."

"his goal in a Question
Paid (careening clock a know in heads in of against me,
I alive the him, thrust as face jutted
thin in they east-west
littered rusting terminated beyond of
07-06 09:13:00
Current music:
So him a name.
Other:or How I Finally Recognized to Love the Balm"


She come unstitched, then, didn't get no laughter from them dogs. They get us so frightened, done torn down our fence, climbed into our highest tree. She got em up there so quietly, then back down again, finally. And y'all know what that means. There is mornin we come out with our tongues clenched so much more than just them clouds, them atoms. We are all mornin, all glancing at the light, and them broke down mirrors. We know that last week you held him in your mouth and imagined you was a cold gulf of empty space, ever distance between you gone and wrecked right out in the sun.

The heads of the others, distorted into slender finality. I cannot enter the reflection in front of this exchange, this plan to unravel the City, leave the bridges and set at the heart a golden tapeworm to gnaw up all the flowing commerce. I realized: a lithe step into it , a touch of my craven tongue, curled to sup the world. O warm neck, O smoke curling over your top lip—until my body pulsed again in his hands, a feeling like unforgettable emptying of my coinpurse, my accounts spent in a rush. For her?

The young boys stand at their futures unwritten. They grip pistols, rifles, like wind in high tension wires. They walk forward so slowly but their faces, moving toward adventure, are all smiles.

"Water footsteps/A fist so clear can see/For yourself/If you don't believe me/There's my pulse again/And morning fading to your trees/Your memory, our skins, eyes like bricks/The burst of raw sex out in ripples upon my entire body/"

Lost! Lost we decided to map it, and see through to the meadows, the hungry places and their favorite goddess-manchild, whom we'd loved for


"I can feel the heat feeling up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning on every thing we could kill."

I smiled at myself in the mirrors, confirming my notion. She nodded over my shoulder. We knew we'd need to look harder: amid diesel and wire, eyes and muzzle, sun and longing, the lounging actresses poised at the tips of their toes, lips opening.

Ask, world, and warm me slowly with your meadows.

"It's at memory, faces, pulse tapping, that's where I want it."

"It's right, close in on me so I cannot be lost!"

[pause. a thousand days pass]

We'd also snapped at the wires of memory, of echo, of meadows beneath the sun. We proclaimed in great sure utterances, willed decided things, life things. High-pitched wind rode over my body. I lost the hand closing on our eyes, the mouth coming to my mouth. Just lost it in the high bright noonday sun, because I couldn't stop lying to my lovers, couldn't tell truth to my friends and instead shaded it with things I thought were good. I lathered on the similes and metaphors like lubricants to make my words slip through, penetrate their trusts smoothly. Yes, just like that. I know the ache of hiding my heart from the eyes of my nearest best most beloved, the storm of futures like falling cards flung into a gale. I wish to speak in less than this coded talk, to unveil my liar's heart, my false bones. I want to gut my hypocrisy and lay it out to steam in the cold clinical air. No, nothing like that. But I crave a filling of the spaces between us.

There's warm hands, smoke that stands in the lowlands, and voices melting together to toast their best intentions. We were lost, dancing or making love entire nights, nights on end. Also we'd scrabble at each other's skin, we left a feeling like smoke on our feet. It's almost gone, the fists at your soul, the pulse of memory in our palms. Lost! Lost! We do the job right, ascribe every suspected smile and inventory the lot, but it's not enough to dampen the echoes.

I suspect they don't believe you. We'd decided to walk, grip, kill, surface from the deep. But none of it mapped the sons we longed for, the future we spent like so much ejaculate on the packed ground. None of these actions described what we were really after- the life in our memories, the fade of our desires into artifice.

Ask me. I tuned to feel the clean pistols, the wired world of her bright vision. Ask me, i begged then. I wanted to heat her up again, to tickle her with my words, bind her with my face like stone.

almost done now i know he's thinking. kill them in our eyes, work loose their favorite teeth, their most loved dolls. i croon, pine over your seed, your memory of events to come, your thick lust for nostalgia, elegy in each orgasm.

I'm tired, she whispered, sharp like a cool drink. Tired of unwritten notions, and these deviled divisions between us, our sexes like wingless birds, bruised angels. Please, put your skin to my lips, let me handle your future with my mouth. Stop moving so slowly, just this once, so I can see you.

Ah mantis, lover with spines, doublejointed rifle shot of yesterday! Take me here, pin me to the hard bark of the trees and don't let me go until I exhale against your ear all my promises.

My love is a horse that shivers when the saddle is lifted from her back. She is an unwritten thought, gripped between inkwell and paper. She dangles above the page and no drops shake free.

"Lightly seize me/won't you believe me/Put the trees before my eyes and exhale me/My favorite whom I loved?"