Ataxia, My Love

 

……

Write me care,

Fold it fair and pin it on a cloud,

And when your ink falls

On my ears,

It will tune to

The pigment of my imagination.

…

Baptized by the tip of your tongue,

I will slake my skin in waters thin

Dissolving in such a font.

…

But write me soon       ,

For I fear we will never grow old together.

I am already ancient in my thoughts of you.

…

Degraded by this vast expanse,

My immigrant eyes

Desire to abandon home

And heart for greater country.

…

Would you labor in the country with me?

You could be

Queen of the cotton dress.

Dancing to dandelions delight

While the cicadas and crickets make song.

The white mice will prance

In a rice rain trance to the alabaster parade.

We will spin like savages,

You will light a fire in a jar,

And my eyes will go native.

..

Would you compete with the dirt

For the cracks in my calloused hands?

If so we will go laced to the fields.

..

We’ll plant an orchard

By casting apples over our heads.

We’ll climb the tallest tree,

Feast on what we can reach,

Send down what we want,

For preserving.

..

We’ll build a house

On the branches

You can hang your arms

Around my mahogany shoulders.

I’ll home in your hold

…

We’ll make like the feather

And land on God’s quilt;

We’ll slake our skins

And bathe in waters thin;

We’ll roll down the hills

To revive the hard ground.

Your eyes ever lightening,

My chest heaving with thunder,

We will harvest what we can

Season after season.

…

I’ll spend my life

Trying to name you

To poem you as

You have poemed me.

…

Oo la lume

My life my light

Oo la loom

Weaver of night

…

Why won’t you write?

..

My eyes so high

With grief at the sky,

Little do I pray

For the thief of the day,

Who took all I had left.

…

Hoofbeat, heart, and clock

Knuckles rap the table

A quick accost

A curse

An arm cast across

Clearing the plains

…

And I can’t seem to cry.

I can’t seem to cry.

…

And I fear

That I will fill the sky with

This unrequited thought.

Born in that virile shade of an hour,

Juxtaposing consciousness with confidence

Into rapid vapid sleep songs.

…

Does a child born blind

See in his dreams?

Why do you haunt mine?

..

How free is he with no effigy.

How worse is he who has carved his own.

How I hate the clouds now.

…

They are songless,

And they never shape as

I desire.

…

Wights in the wardrobe

Clothe in my jackets.

I pull,

But I can’t tell fiber

From figment.

…

I reach for the light

I open a jar

It lets out a mouthful of smoke

…

Sliding white and slow

Out of rosy petals

Little pale fingers

Pull the air

..

I watch to see if it settles

..

I dance in it

It takes my form

..

I choke

And diminish