Euphony

Something from the comic books—
yes, that’s a good beginning. We’ll start
out unreal and fantastic, turning dark
and graphic in time. Fantastic. Shazam,
kapow. Inset—a face with tears puddling,
unrealistic eyepools of sorrow, balloon
filled with Father! father! or exclamations
equally italicized and important. Some
thing of import, so that later when blood
burbles from enemy chest, we know
the motivation. It’s important to know
the motivation. We might reasonably
be called people, but then again we’re alien
forces, battling and uncertain, juxtaposed
against the bright world of justice.
Life forces nonetheless, not robotic
but vital, seething. Seething. It seems
important to repeat certain things.
Others can be written once, erased or
consigned to some shelf. Dusty, arcane.
Where to place emphasis. What to outline
in black. Sketched like this, we look
like people, only graphic, creatures of graphite,
dark smudges imperfectly drawn against
surreal landscapes, the world we’ve come to know.

Drifting down a long trip to the sea
Silk sash swelled with all she did not write
Then dips the pen’s sharp silver beads

In ink pools, oily spills, across veinless leaves,
Each pocket of rocks holding tight
Drifting down a long trip to the sea.

She chose the tides, a moon guide, not to bleed,
Marches to the river waist height,
Then dips the pen’s sharp silver beads.

She sifts the sand and steals a stone for every need
She has to carry into the night,
Drifting down a long trip to the sea.

Starving, on her own hunger she feeds,
Then lays down the arms of her last fight,
Then drips the pen’s sharp silver beads.

She signs the slip, leaves it for him to see.
Strangely grinning lips, now her body seems so light,
Drifting down a long trip to the sea,
Then drips the pen’s sharp silver beads.

Light unfolds itself
in the dark of your veins,
in the deserted
cold of midnight

when my eyelids
jig for fish,
where skin separates
the fragile seasons.

I am asleep,
curled-up with the spiders
and a strange scent
of mold.

You’re a wet leaf hanging
in the thin belly of the moon;
I reach for the door to grab your hair
by the invisibility of it.

A sink full of applauding glass and metal
rolls my shoulder,
a dog’s rib-cage wedged
between my legs.

A flock of birds
move like thought
in the breaks of your voice,
prancing through my temple –

a shotgun blast of pellets
floating to the surface of a pond.

I moan and smear my forehead, a dying flower,
reaching for a dark hole,

wishing that you would
come and dream with me.

At first, when sounds were shifting,
(although the moves were noiseless)
by unresisted drifting
we voiced what should be voiceless

and though your moves were noiseless,
still I was moved, the cause
your voice. No longer voiceless,
we broke the ancient laws,

moved by a modern cause
to mock a classic notion.
We broke the ancient laws
and set the tongues in motion,

but mock a classic notion
(grim are the laws of change)
and tongues, once set in motion,
can let the words grow strange.

Grim are the laws of change:
the syllables, unstrung,
have let the words grow strange
so now a vulgar tongue,

its syllables unstrung,
leaves endings unresolved.
We speak a vulgar tongue.
Its case cannot not be solved

by endings. Unresolved,
the lips, the cheeks grow hollow.
Their case cannot be solved.
Their logic does not follow.

The lips and cheeks grow hollow
at last, and sounds are shifting.
We let the logic follow
its unresisted drifting.