I only collect the contagious god.
I can be so much…
Oh. Oh.
I'm laughing!
Oh. This suggestion: Hunt for them. Abandon the cigarette and step back into the rain to trace the lead. Like that. That's what this suggests. So.
So.
Before I step: I am safe. Realize. What is keeping me away? No feeding — no tubes no water no brine no bristol no breathing no splurge no tack no wire no back. No hurting — no threat no invade no hit no break no slice no cut no puncture no slash no beat no arrest no burn no gag no lash no whip no shout. No fade — no take no let no bend no break no fix no let no slept no met no meet no re. No end. So in: Here. I. Am. Safe. No company.
Like promised.
Will I ever—
Mucus. Like a slug trail. That's what's leaving. I can pick up its scent and track it, down that alley. Crawling up the brick and slipping in a flush-to-wall window. The bottom of the black shoes, the khaki coat. There was a wraparound mask. Notate. Send it to the recorder, and set up the wall. Damn the rain: Make it slick. Damn the thunder: Want to hear the inside of the car, report back to recorder what clangings. Or what, if fire. So take a note. Climb up. Damned slick. Rain coming down. Remember the comic books in the brown paper sacks and their future protectors. Or not. Remember nothing. Keep blank as the brick facade leans up below you. The window is a small reach, and you almost want to stop and turn back up and reach the bottom, set out of the alleyway and go back to your car, remove the cigarette lighter, set it down on the seat beside you and go up. Let the sirens and small hats know what they missed. But you don't. You keep climbing to the window. Set so smoothly into its facade. A perfectly clean window into whatever rummaging. What the wraparound mask is getting to up there, whether it be some document or burning by now — you have to catch it, unmask that face. Notate to recorder. Hands are reaching the edge and I can always pull myself up in a flash — that is never a problem. If the rain just—
That's an action. Were you embossed?
Is it coy if I show you what my hands are doing?
Why I spend so much time in this filthy corner, I don't know — I assure you. I know the things missed couldn't have slipped below this small dig of detritus.
The basic grace is right before you, above you.
No slash.
Moving. Next corner. This a white and almost jellied. Understand where it all should've been — not in a certain color or mood but in a pulse. Like pulling up instead of pulling down, esophageal. The mirror of stomach and uterus. That's a pop psych. Now that's a fiction!
Nothing here. My hands are gloves.
So many steps before the next corner. A clever map that I haven't drawn yet — oh well. Here now. Messing. This air is so nope! Nothing.
Trek. Should I even begin to describe the fourth? Or is it better to leave it a line, and let you zoom in on a point and point on as I go—
I'm left with all this land before me! The mountainous planes! The hilled valleys! Roaming on the grass and snow feels so good, and the better breathing. This is the healthiest thing I've ever done.
The confession to the mother about the selfsame event of last year. Not an adventure.
So, in failing, I'm left with all the rest. The all but corners. The sap bottom of a deep well. The place just below the grifted machines in their upwards sucking; the sound around a consonant. Pourous blood, or shale. Quaked salt. (me!) If I set off now, the safari will not be far behind. A jungle in creeping. Vines a—
Start. Move foot next. The dirt below like a catching or great handshake between fault lines. Sacrament because of the day in which all the people saw the worlds laid out in traps before them, ripe shining traps full of all the world's starting points. I vow to never X an X again.
That old age is a constant haven-forward stooping. Born again is the trailer before the movie.
Am I inducing anger? Am I making anger? Loam.
The romantics disavow the Word — strike it from their dictionaries and burn inscribed plates, their soft pillows, clothes, notebooks, devices. They burn each other in somas. The Word is kept for later. (keep peeking!)
Eternity is the combustion engine.
Some see the two oldest dancers as assassin and political figure — always sculpting the other's legacy and circling in theatres.
Could I just look up again?
…
In amber.
I am the beggar that chooses.
Look again. You'll grow a new leaf.
What I really see is this room amid a big fire, kept from the heat but deep in the river of it, caught in its current but unmoving. A set stone. I see this with stars in my eyes.
I have gone awhile. My longest. You are still in the pews but the crosslight behind me is dimming. A timer clicks.
I have feet to scan over, hands to run and a tongue to work — won't show you the tongue but the hands and feet are calloused and don't breathe past that certain skin.
Great gaps, deepening chasms, going slightly deeper per minute than the falling all of us.
In hoping you are left to muck with the gathered light, on the floor:
Two lovers. Sleeping in bed. Asleep for hours. Their eyes faintly twitch, a dance to anyone who would watch. One begins to mutter, lips part a bit and the throat makes a low sound. Then a word. A word belonging to its own axis, and still spinning with its company. So one lover speaks. A parable in dream. The other lover wakes. The noise is too much to ignore and sleep deeply through. The other lover watches the speaking mouth, and listens and means to remember this speech and its odd and tilting way, to recite back this speech to the speaking lover when they are both awake. The dream speech slows, becomes intermittent, then winds off in murmur. The listening lover falls asleep before the last word is spoken, and is taken into a deeper and more imaginative sleep. The listening lover, now sleeping, begins to murmur too, at a rapid pace, and the words build on each other to form strings of melting things, until the pace is strong enough to hold steady as the sleeping lover now goes louder, talking almost conversationally, amid an action somewhere deep and hidden, enough to wake the other lover who immediately notes the urgency of this speech, then its lilt, then its belonging to a dream, then its nuances, its steady and shifting rhythm, and notes to remember this, pick up certain phrases to hold until morning when the other lover can listen to this odd soliloquy that they can talk about together, this speech in sleep of all places, so the newly listening lover happily falls back asleep in front of a track of talk that eventually, minutes later, slows and ceases. The newly sleeping lover enters a span of sleep that goes out wide on all sides and doesn't seem to stop, and feels a strange current, and in sleep begins to speak in fervor, a warbling diluted appeal to some one thing above all of it, and the other lover wakes again and is taken so strongly by the passion, this speech, that, newly awake and determined to remember this, for this is strong enough to always be unfamiliar, the listening lover forgets the prior waking and listens intently, pushing back sleep in spurs that go in and fade and go in and fade like the errant way of talking in which the other lover still speaks, still speaking, but the wave is too under cut by sleep, and sleep pulls the listening lover back, while the other lover continues for awhile and then comes to rest again. And just as the last listening lover is gripped again and let roam in something wild—