4,298 Readings

Considerations

Consider, O Lord, how You sit            atop the sky; like a man
                                                                                                                        in a glass bottom boat.

                                        Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.

          Consider the women, marbling
                                                                                in their corners
the men with tongues of bronze; how

                                                       you tool the silence around them.

Consider the rolling wheel of Spring
                                                                                     the Summer, a haunt of blue;

                                             How the rivers roll up                                                         like prayer mats.

Consider my Lover;
                                                  the yellow church of his skin, the clean
                    wells of his ears;

How the notes of a song come to him
                                                                                                    like birds descending
                                                            on a power line; How

          in his absence                                          I am of two throats

                                        each of them cramped.


~


Consider, O Lover, my throat
                                                                                     white as cigarette paper.
The crushed lavender of my knuckles.

               My heart, a dulled                 needle threaded through
                                                                                                                        too many patterns.

                                   Lover, they were stitches of pain
                                                                                                    you undid me of;

          There is blood gone rancid in me                                               you can not move.

But how we comb                           and comb the night for jewels
                                                                                                                                            to stack
                                                                                                         around one another,
                                             to cast in the mold of our love.

                    That dandy, the sky, enters blue-suited
                                                                                                                   sun like a scotch in hand

                                                                                as I consider the brevity of a lion;

                                       How many flies can touch                 at decay.

Consider the road, long
                                                                 and forked as the Devil’s own tongue.

                    Consider the Devil, burning                           every bridge;
                                                                                                                                                      Placing
                                                                                in every tree a black

bird.       In every bird a black       thought.


~


Consider, O Devil, how these thoughts
                                                                                will darken the map.

                    How the desert ants clean the sand                                from their legs.

How the women will cluster;

                                        held together by some vine of gossip, souring like grapes.

          Consider Autumn; its many whispered undoings.
                                                                                                                                            Its cousin, the Wind,
                                                                                                                        agitating all.

                                   And Winter, like the ruin
                                                                                     of some river.

The clock leaves the wall, lights on
                                                                                                              my shoulder to peck out

                    the time, and my bones
                                                  can trace their longest name to the ground.
Posted 10/23/11
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