"Dark Nipple of the Figs"

[ “Dark Nipple of the Figs” ]

The things we said, or chose not to; the way it happens
when the mind divides, makes an eye flinch. I know
as a door opens to a darker room you'll find it is
a warm September evening. Sometimes we kissed
graceful appetizing female forms in our mind.
we heard my mother's voice, We played frightening games
such as love, and vague. We were lonely and hungry and ordinary.
What is a gust of wind but the act of embrace?
What makes the dream the way it is, subtly aural
and finely positioned like your mouth: and I am still
in bed, the drywall is my skin, your crumpled words
are a perturbed skeletal pattern adorned with molars
darned and huddled in, I suppose, for a process
in the time of history we never made specific.
Sometimes we heard the children crying in hunger in our mind.
We occupied ourselves with sufferings. A body strolling away
from you at some distance, once, twice, or many times
into the expanse of the heavens; your thigh,
dripping rosewater, insect wings and shadowed woods
with a feeling of deep sadness that we had not fulfilled
our senses. Your head and face in particular. My hand
on your waist. When the temperature drops to the bottom
like the dandelion seeds of your breasts
*It was pleasant to imagine* I could see the queen of all
flowers already half-erased. And you are sitting
at my kitchen table, tugging the spilled rice.
How can I tell you now, my heart curls in sorrow
like autumn leaves. And yet later, holding your shoulder,
how could I say "your kiss tastes of blood, or wellwater
flecked with rust?*" The next day I will love my life.
* * * * *


*Title and one line from an Untitled poem by Araki Yasusada

what it means to utter a word

[ what it means to utter a word. ]

Then nothing. A swallow of love passes through my chest.
Such steely recognition must be a damaged body.
Add romantic. Add bailing out. And then
add the troubling bits, forever.
I think about this sometimes,
how, among the pieces, you don't want to know.
This is the genuine self, but generally I do without.
Beneath the house, a threat. Who’s family secret
threatens the subframe? Grill of floorboards.
A ramshackle house. How many worlds in this
blink of an eye? My heart hangs out of its pocket,
appears to dwell in the air, only only only only
its weeping is not still. I miss your mashed potatoes.
I drop from your handkerchief of sky, lost wren.
Then the sound of dishes being broke. So farewell,
or is that it's a pleasure to meet you. And that's all,
says Desire, to soften my resistance. Someone's in
the kitchen breaking dishes. Each final scream.
The dream bread falls through the dream;
the how about I cannot live without you.
In its destructive path how hyacinths.
Your hair smells of petunias and chipped glass.
You have to do everything now yourself.
After you start up again in those get-on-with-it
stilettos, those daisies and violets and hyacinths.
And those roses. You ask yourself.
* * * * *