obey your flesh and descend

i am of the country.

these brooklyn nights of mocked moons pass through us unslept

marrows of darknesses are unmet, forgotten in teemingness light

but it is we who forgot ourselves in the screaming clout of engines

and it is my flesh unkempt that has been arcing to and fro, unable to let go.

then somehow always dawn arrives as it has for a clockless bygone.

when once it spilled itself in silence til the sounds we made sung it found

now it bays our paused bones like bells.

in landscapes of skin you are here with me

and so is my witching soul dwelling--

its brawn of strange poetry clicks placelessly

while facing its fans on the embers of stagnant hours

words are spells, time has to be devoured and

death is gifting a secret forever.

i've learned how to hold a seed out among a crowd of deserts

and watch as their plantless dunes pant.

i trust language as an experiment of faith

though these sentences insecurely admit it

what we seek are not stars seen through chinks and mirrors.

what we seek are not shapes dancing anonymously behind a curtain.

i can feel your body and its faces

mid-blurring in cisterns of my mind swimming closer.

memories are not anonymous though their imagery is tricky

every day the red fruit i brought above roofs is for you

and i hope it is ok when carried off by living birds

to boughs of bridges

barely swinging in the gaps

we did not make but cross.

my totem body looks toward it loudly from the exhausting mud

what is it? only my confessions of diminishing teeth have guessed

my jaw sits bound so tightly it grinds in a veneer of sleep.

but you're right, when the cage door is opened my love does not step out.

ever since our answers disguised themselves as questions and

desires have been unlived ghosts called freewill.

i don't know who unlocked it and why.

each new day in modernity begins pre-haunted with

the hearts of people in the custody of history.

so you're right, i have been unyielding, bitterly and

my roots sent out poisons so that nothing may grow nigh

what gathers does so along borders

you have all stood in the shadow of my wounded dream

as it darkened--as it coiled and begged.

but we need not be bigger or smaller than we are.

i've shed and let it go, though very close to the sun, i had no one.

in lieu of a Man ill be a man and a woman and the plainest flower in the field

and become every day less afraid of myself

and less obliging to the throne of Men made gold and baroque with rape.

my chimera heart that has stiffened and stalled and trusted only itself

will transform and adapt along a curve not an angle.

what remains is sung

i am of the country.

i am of land and its wide sweeping parts belong to what we've lost.

i do not understand why we forsake life's tests and endless place to take our breath

so forgive me while running until no cars are felt and no road lies under feet.

love me and run alongside, and if in our steps we lurch, we can rest.

this day does not burn, or rather it does, but doesn't hurt.

what remains is screamed

i am of the country!

we must keep working and loving and learning

even amid flowers waking up in beds of dead bees.

we must keep walking an already over-trodden land

even as it yawns an uncharactered emptiness.

we must want yes while war is noisome and no and emptying

while its black blood runs deeper because we want life to be easy.

there can be no rising if we think we are falling

we cannot stand to not feel this--

something is waiting beyond our veils.

the expanding spring is here.

it is this lonesome side-walk sapling that is boxed in and pretty

it is the restrained blossoms

cajoling our callow nature,

but it is not this feast of fancy crumbs,

our jeering treeless stretches and

the worldless eye of city skies.

my existence was folded neatly and i needed to carelessly break it.

now i back track a mind that has lived to strip itself but worries about being too naked.

those of us who know how to weave find it tempting to unite loose ends that are messy

but even knots seeming to hold can unravel.

so be it. uncertainty is the soul of pleasure.

how could we not try? what else would we do?

this is why the wild fox said the prince the point is to create ties.

what we love we should tame, but we should not tame what we cannot love.

we have tamed the world as intensely as we fear to love it.

more than ever blood and bone are only home for the spirit that sees this.

so no more bloodletting, a body needs itself.

even if our love at times scares us and makes us strangers

it will always invent new invitations.

i try not to doubt this friend-studded roam

it's the only thing i know.

friend-ship wards off the bullshit of an uncertain tomorrow.