EARTH TONES

 

that petal didn’t 
decide to drop  
from the peony  
I say to myself

 
look at your face  
already mine  
and gone 
mirror facing a swath  

of coppered grass 

dark careful years

how clearly 
you’ve let the trees go 

how the vines  
strangle the oak  
spiral counterclockwise

like it has to 

what is outside  
I call nature  

I read water  
light space  
the starving wind  

sick with it all 

on my finger  
the fine white  
powder  

from the wing  
of a moth

how impossible  
it is to die 

to be anointed 
with love  
a more intricate  

structure for sorrow  

each object rewound  

to its original  
clusteredfucked  

brilliance 

life is funny  
like that  
to think one day  

you will be a boat  

on fire at sea 

put that way  
the dark  
looks so dumb  
so beautiful  
like everything  
gently wrapping  

itself around  
whatever it isn’t  

as for this morning  

it looks pretty  
unimpressed 

pretty soon  
I will have no idea 

in real life the water  

I put on to boil 
is cold again

I will stay home  
look at the walls 
let the eyeball  
seek out  
its silences 

this monster the body  

this miracle its pain 

I try hard 
to hide my crazy  
this compulsion  
to smell my fingers

 
to remember  
what I’ve touched 
and destroyed  
in passing 
at large in the day 

I sit inside 
pyramidal silence  
surrounded by stuff  

for the next life 
green pillows  
everywhere I turn 

everywhere I turn  
trembling ladders  
of lamentation

 
fall beginning  
its slow striptease  
sorry please sorry please

 

talk sweaters to me
bury me  
in skin like this  

then not quite  

like this 

dig for me  
a self better 
kept from itself 

wake me up  
to big hands  
the rich  
heartless sky  
stretching  
forever sketching