Thinking It Will Help Will Help

     (for Rjo)

1.
an opening/a      softness
all that's left from moving a smashed thumb
away from the married house something
vibrates and I startle a sound track
repeats, I push buttons and I cry
you bring
a vague memory to the table a building or the idea of one
something one could open or close something inaccessible
to me:
the meaning that can't be made can't be escaped
I cannot be everything though for some time
this story began with an opening
a softness a space
made in the body where the outside
can get in
a space that can be opened but not closed

again

2.
I wanted to run away instead
I walked
I arched at my arch-
      rival

I put to and to twogether
I keep looking for everything that isn't there

if you were really stabbing me I don't think
I'd compare it to this:

I want to ask you nicely
to put your insides away

you do not insist and this makes me—

I've been everywhere and nowhere all at once and now I'm here

but why is that not you thumping and roaring outside?

 
3.
the raucous kind of lullaby that wakes
what's dead in you:

that's what I'd like you
to sing to me

4.
I have returned to the place where I lost things
to put things back where they belong

   a slot, a box, a perforation, a tab, an instance, a crack in the
   glass, a smear, a slit, an opening, an artery, a push, a stamp, a
   stall, a stable, a hall, a table, a mark, a miss, an absence of
   substance, a wind, a flutter, a slide, a crank, a sideways
   walking crab, an inculcation, a movie, a mist

I missed

I am startled awake

I am asleep in the desert

I have put things back where I lost them
to return to the place where I belong

5.
     Partial Implosion

from the part of me that knows
how to begin
a line forms here to stand in the wind
the wind forms here
     forms her
forms the part of me that knows
the shape of the beginning
I'm terrified
I'll blurt out something true

I fall apart when I fall through you

6.
I am barely/entirely
I am particulate/reticent
I articulate, i.e. I bend
at the furthest junctures
I am point blank
     I point
   I pant
I am worn through
near the edges
I put

     slight pressure
     applied
     consistently
     to the center
     of the heart

but how can I not?
I cannot wait for the rest to settle
I must
I skate where it's thinnest
I swear when I fall through
I send/spinning
I bend
where most difficult

in spite of you

the darkness is

The darkness is dark, I have given up
anguish for instability. What's re-
constituted must have been constituted once
to begin with. But to end,
to wit— to have given up
the darkness, to have given in
to insistence over instability, to have
stated the indefensible—I beg
to differ, I beg
to defer. To darkness, to absolute
absolution, to the ridiculous
fray. To default. I put my foot
down, I put my foot away. I've got to find
something else to stand on. Or is it
the other way around? I have given up
instability for you. And is this what it comes to,
a long harmonica wail, a few
repeated platitudes, sotto voce? A whack on the back
for good measure, a crack in the door.
I have given up.
The wind comes right through.

Your Turn, or

    That's Charlier Parker To You

I'll take all this—and I do, I push
the button and I remember—I'll hold all this,
what I was thinking. A yellow light
flashes on/off; on/off; on/
off. I'll defend all this, I'll define the quotidian:
moving forward/a similar fantasy/flip
this dark/this easy/this flip, slip
away. Find this left: a sliver
in the finger, a sensation of dropping
in the palms. This is not paralysis.
This is empty and I could get used
to almost anything. So I'll take nothing, I'll have to let the rest
escape. But all that's visible
is opening/closing, moisture or the absence thereof, which causes us to believe
in color. A textureless smear on the window, I'll take
all that too. Nothing of consequence.
I'll refine the quotidian: He has to live somewhere
because he is a corporeal being. But I can tell

that's not what they were meaning.

That's not what they were meaning at all.