jayivan

i fall on my knees
before this wasteland of words,
the books abandoned

to basement junk shops,
aligned on splintered shelving
ordered in chaos:

orientalists
and philosophers unread
(unread as undone,

the pages gone blank
the letters turned back to white,
white on white thought-blight).

Yet still I write,
a pliable sight.

my love grows as trees
that dropped their leaves, and bare-branched,
braces against wind

We are happiest
on cloudy days as if sun
burns through our thinned skin,

lays bare the vessels,
dries out the circulation,
mixes the message;

we could hide in shade,
just be—wordless, sweatless
on each others chests:

listen, your heart beats—
quiet, my heart still pulses—
it is all we are:

Two humans spinning in space
Lonely, but for our embrace.

The death of a day:
I pause as the soil between
my toes heaves a sigh.

So little a thing:
the passing of a day unmarked
by blizzard or flood,

a day unscathed by
social scandal, just simply:
the death of a day.

In the field I stand
looking up, night wind soothing
the hairs on my neck,

Those small, small points telling me out of the great great Vast:
To know that I am here and the day has passed.

The last scratch behind
Her ear, to the place a lame
Leg can reach no more.

Furious I scratch
To give some peace where lame legs
Try, in hope, to reach,

Twitching in old age
Like in her puppy dreamtime
When her sleeping legs

Would chase the rabbits
Hungry in the desert hills
For prickly pear seeds:

But now she rolls on her side releasing a sigh
Faint, resigned, perhaps ready for goodbye.

I’ve driven this road
Staring at the mountain crest
In which I see his

Ghost chasing wild dogs
Farther than my eyes can see
Along the twisted ridge

Beneath the cedar
Trees and radio towers
Beams, gunned-down ghost

Still there, still still there:
The red seeping knotted roots;
The smoking limbs; me

Driving in a car and standing on that cliff,
He’s watching me in death complicit.