Poem II

Configuration

 

 

The aftertaste of happiness burns a smile on lips.

The eye of a goddess rolls backwards in her skull.

 

Nothing but energy,

Nothing but time.

Nothing unchanging,

Nothing but space.

Definition is what we cling to.

Time creates definition and space.

Time: an egg hard boiling.

Definition: lying on the edge of experience.

Space: two bodies in unequal exchange.

Definition is the crater a head leaves on a pillow,

A photograph too long crooked on the wall.

Time is the calibration of space bordered by empty hands,

The roll of waves reaching for a naked foot,

The journey of tears carving furrows in cheeks.

 

Where is space that hides goddesses

As invincible as robots,

As human as whores fleeing childhood terrors?

Where are definitions of magic and belief,

Transcendence and essence,

Cold stones that compose lyrics of the future,

Clear stones that sing them,

 Dry bones that neutralize acid in men’s hearts?

 

Where is time slow time

Crystallizing and geometrizing

Like the severed tail

Of an iguana healing itself?

Infants search for names among debris;

The beds of our grandparents splinter

Beneath the auctioneer’s gavel.

Definition: a poet asleep across an unworked page

 

Swallows the dust in her mouth;

A muse adamantly refuses.

Time is a fireball dying ray by cold ray

While horizons consume our angled shadows.

 

Our sidewalks are littered

With shards of desire.

When morning comes a pigeon

Mistakes them for feed,

And heals its cracked beak.