If you're just joining us...
Welcome to the scene of the crash.
To the longitude ticking seconds off held breath.
Water measured on fingers.
To precise understandings of thunderheads grinding sky
& flashes of geode silhouettes pushed inside out in your eye.
For an easier analogy: count thoughts gone wind-tilt
& swallowed cyclones resurrecting tendrils whipped into flesh on one hand
& the time it takes to tear your heart in two on the other.
We're chaos by practice. Remember the history of longitude:
every ship has a dog cut by a single knife kept in London.
Every noon said knife is sprinkled with "the powder of sympathy",
every dog on ships earth-wide howl simultaneously. Captains know it's noon in London.
Calculations begin to find longitude:
The sum it takes to change a man into cloud.
If you're just joining us...
listen to thoughts begin the dance with flightless bees
as the angel of the earth prepares for wing
gathering flame's fallen leaves
sifting the silence with static
filters found white under tongues of mirrors faced/effaced
with some flesh estimate some supple plumbing
some gravity-fed meat sliced with smiles
it's bluedawn on the blown-glass of stilled hearts
there you are waiting inside yourself hair caught
in the dazzling hurricane
of a million screaming veins spread out in metropolis
Remember, in search of longitude
captains are taught the mystical art of meditation.
"It's as if every place is aware of every other place."
ships technically wouldn't leave English coves,
the world would move around them.
It's as if waves of salt are caught in tides untouchable
to cesium atoms. As if water is moving faster
than ships, as if the earth is spinning off it's axis.
As if time travel is only achieved
after remaining
perfectly still
until night's flesh melts wax
over a scalpel's
crack of eyelash.
If you're just joining us...
luminous digits sync background music
to a half-remembered Volta
says: the development of the cesium atomic clock
led to an actual redefinition of the second circa 1967
After that, people died more slowly
After that we were dust lifted by astronomical prayers
& perfect chords played on galactic spines.
Nidi strings sweeping the length of
a single heartbeat cut into a bi-zillion pieces
Don't whisper word one about shattered Terra-cotta water
clocks wished back together & the irony of cracked crow's feet
in time's age old face. You're a man.
Stand up! Put yourself together.
Show yourself heatwhite chips of sky
in your day's throat
lightning doesn't fall
strikes up from the ground in a wink of black
A second. A fraction of day,
but by the vibrations of an atom a second
being the line between the star flattened in your cornea
& you, "slack in a wet rope."
Let's start over.
In the beginning, molecules swarm,
dead air in an expectant mouth.
The microphone of shy synapse.
In the beginning, you, supernova, & a beach-blank fury
set loose in an ivory lyric between strangers.
You, honeyed eye of pneumatic homonyms
that'll pass for whitewash
& touch-love murmurs
In the beginning,
your heart, an empty pocket
your mistakes, burning a new moon
your eye, shards of sky
closer than it appears
in a spidered driver's side mirror.
Your thought: it must it must it must
either come or go,
the real answer is flux!
caught between
the welder & the torch.
If you're just joining us...
This is about death & the search for true north.
It's about mountains rising like tombs
in the pistil-plush pulse of an empty-
handed search for midnight mouths.
Whiskied breath that forms clouds
resembling a contusion of stars
that stare & stare at....dust walking around.
A luminous curve melting a hole thru empty eyelids,
serpentine arms fold-out from a Lucite ball of
glass that bakes hair back into fool's gold.
A sunburned dulciana vibrato
makes its way into a world
flamed to a perfect red?
