…Until then.

How can you be terribly hopeful?
Love, inapparently
Kill first, hunger later

I don’t think it is a secret
That you doubt
That your intention is clouded

How do you not know
That meaning is
Chasing your own tail?

Leaving
Slowly, by the door.

You walk away
I enter the world-

Bare, unending sky
Boundless Earth

Five layers of atmosphere
And my feet.

There is no means of forgetting
That is as thorough
As reproducing a memory in grey,
Fashioned as a homed pigeon.

It won’t live forever,
It will keep flying away
And bring all the sorrow it has taught itself
In its unblinking vigil.

Still, the heart measures.

There’s no hurry in the world
Than the one to be desperately sad.
Happiness is not blessed with feet.

Perhaps it is as lifeless as a stone,
Even unalterable.

Still, the heart measures.

I flatten the ground over my heart-
To plant,
To imagine colors.
And yet,

I can never replace the need for hills
To take down the Sun.

Yesterday, someone filled a bowl
With bougainvillea

What does it mean?
Must it matter?

Somebody, spent an afternoon
Plucking them,
Going over the fence

Over barbed, curled
Flowy tresses

Following it as though
Pursuing a train-track.

Brought it here, to stagnate
In one place.

Culminating that many travels.

I told a kid heading that way-

“You can’t smell them
They smell of nothing.

They could take the smell of water, at most.”

She put her face in that vase
Took a long, pink breath.

I think I know what people in love do-

They go inside themselves
Build vase-shaped houses-
Accommodating planets and constellations
At approximately averaged distances

And stick bougainvilleas on the walls.

He asked to and I heard
His heart, first from the left
Then from the right

Painfully craning such that
The heaviness of my head
On his rib-cage
Made an impressionable
Account of loving

Then I began to count
Sheep as heart sounds,
[White, long-haired,
With fixed gaze-]
Jumping over a square fence

Breathing his scent,
Molecule by dying molecule, thought;

Perhaps we demand
Much more than love;

We demand of one another,
Spitting images

To dismiss reality
With dream.

One, long, uninterrupted dream
Finished with smooth rounded corners.

There is no sufferable sadness

Although we might think that
Somebody,

At least this person
Sitting next to you on the bus
Not watching out of the window

Is not thinking of stairs
As I am.

He is perhaps thinking
Of a field, at night,
When the dark grass,
Thick with grief
Bruises soft fingers

And thinks to himself
“Harvest!”

Take a paper and write sleep on it. And then gently, never too careful, fold one morning close to its night and let the hours disappear inside. Wait until they close the door on you. [Here, observe care in not parting the day from its night.] Paint spine for door. A spine as observed under skin. For Sun, windows. A table for the Earth with edges. Here, we walk on the Sky, old sewn mattress with hard knots.

With light as little as that filtering through paper, discern a face lighted just that much. Spare the Zenith. A pair of hands and feet, general human attributes. The background of a waterfall. Begin dreaming. Do not open eyes unless you must begin anew. Consider what you recall – the places, the people and how you looked. There is no method in making tea. Consider that.

For as long as the hours last, disregard them. For tenderness, bring in a cat. You may eat what you cook. Draw shapes and let them take shape. Around you now, you may draw an ocean. An ocean, around you. Begin writing letters with just the name of the addressee. You have said what you always wanted to say.

Think of everything that you do not know and lose track. Come to things you think you know and restart. Place words on the edge of the aforementioned Earth and let them fall, one by one. Carry meaning to the center of all forgetting. Trust that the relationship between rain and flowers is untrue. That grass requires water to become coarse.

You may plant a tree. Only those that you know by the leaf. Nevermind the name. Be impatient about tender,loving,care.

Laugh. Touch with familiarity. Acquaint your skin with strangeness. There’s nothing new. Teach yourself to understand newly. Rest from laughing. Do not forget to see. Shut your eyes tight. Wipe any untoward fears. Replace them with the picture of a moon. Close-up shot. Open your eyes.
Begin dreaming.