Poem-A-Day #348 : Knife In Water

Knife In Water

The darkness of thought - knife in water

imagine that kind of jump

                                          where body can
                                vanish in liquid
I crave that kind of
going

Imagine me knifing the water each time I say goodbye -

I re-read the ending of The Anthropology of Water
and do not remember that the final image
is of a dying cat -
                              The cat is looking out from very far back in its eyes now, from a huge room where everything is running slowly away

                                                        - and then -
                                                                             The soul of a cat is mortal.

                                                                                                                          - and then -
                                                                                                                                               It does its best.

Think about Anne Carson's imagined dead and real dead - and then add self to that

A hacking cough that results in a claw-footed tub in your toilet

the words
                                               tangle knot
                                       find purchase to foot on - there
is beauty in the glass knife piercing your rib cage

What is best? -

The dying distance themselves from the living - not
because they are afraid of infecting us with their death
but because they may want to turn back

paths become dangerous backwards

Poem-A-Day #219 : Blood

Blood

If you cracked the wall open the blood that would fall out would drown the room in scent and iron and the shattered fragments of red light would sift the carpet would finger the room like a zen garden whose names are written there and how does the blood find a way out of this space beastly and soiled the blood is the house's it is a twin without skin the house a twin of only skin there is no other place there are no bones the holes in the walls will no heal there is no scab wallpaper is not strong enough

Poem-A-Day #217 : Thump

Thump

The sound wants to find the room with people in it
fingers the door for ways inside

The smoothness of the wood is cracking under iron
a head banging against the wall until it breaks

What will sound do with the people found
waves upon waves of echo attaching themselves

To skin an pulling undertow like until there is rip
until the floaters in the edge of sight become burns

Until bone and break and render and soap
all are quivering masses on the blue and green blankets

Sound wants bodies it needs them to walk itself out
the front door to find other bodies to scream itself into

Poem-A-Day #212 : The Tower

The Tower

Huddled on the wooden siding like one of those algae-eating fish that stick to the sides of tanks - it's insane hideous - those things are laughable they don't belong - a little bit off center - the tower library the place where people hang themselves is a dark space that we should not go - it is mold and earth and rotting books - all the doors close themselves as they should to hide this - Mother I ...