Work Text:
The water makes a flat plane
and the sky reflects ocean like glass.
One ship on the air dares the boundary
of white-cold mist that seems impossible to pass.
Like waking to sleeping or sleeping to dying
the aerostatic soars, not sailing but flying
but now the beat of the thing has fallen out.
If we are talking about
death
…How does it feel? I imagine the mess
of a body, a life left unlived,
of something unraveled,
or a camera, a gun and a crime scene, a corpse-
a blueing body on a slab in the morgue
and its face in your mind and its hand
in your hand
and its face…
You are losing the strand.
Yes, I know. The tongue-twisting macabre is no good
as a poem.
But the rhythm is there. And you are there too.
And with both of us here it can be
me and you-
But you know I’m not here. It’s the pale. It’s the light.
It’s a ticker-tape reel with a twist to the right
And a mantra you hum like a child in the dark who is seeking some sun
(who is seeking a spark)
You don’t need me now like you needed me then. What you need is
to heal a wound no longer fresh (I dream of you and me and in the night it’s almost real)
and in the ruined dreck of hulls on the sea
it is me. It is you. It is me.
You are losing the mesh.
I know.
Deep in the sky
with the waves, the rotten curling mist,
faint moisture forming beads that trail the inside of my wrist,
you’re here like in a dream or nightmare, long ago.
I’m everywhere.
For now.
And always. I’ll be waiting in the deep.
You have only to wait and fall asleep.
A siren song slips sword-like through your ribs
out pours a decade’s worth of paper and ink
It’s mortal. I’ve got you to the core.
I don’t want to do this Volta anymore.
You have to. It keeps you focused, sharp
when your own mind is the enemy, you need a friend at heart
I know.
And when you’re through these clouds at last
I’ll go.
In the meantime, let me regard you with my own
Eyes-
I tell the truth I hold your hand I speak no
Eyes-
You’re not listening.
I fly. I take to wing
I sing. I sing. I sing.
In the dark in the cold room he looks asleep
And when you touch his hand he feels asleep
In the light
I have nothing left to
keep you here
please listen
Sometimes when we talk about death
we imagine a body left in a state of decay.
We imagine a life left in shreds, a mess.
We imagine a friend who falls. We imagine the grey
light of an early morning and the end of a world.
A banner unfurled-