THE NUMBERS ARE NOT IN
The world is filled with those who want
someone else, just as the world
is split in halves, or hemispheres
if we want the word that says it
with a measure of beauty. Most times,
we do. But tonight, what
you get is halves. Tonight
what you get is another unanswered
question. Something like,
why do cyclones spin counter-clockwise
in this half of the world?
Something like my thoughts
in the shower, my body
washed by someone else,
and I’m thinking of dark matter,
not because my heart
on its haunches sits bleeding out
like last week’s pitiful possum,
its hateful mouth red raw,
but because dark matter is one more thing
I won’t ever understand.
No knowledge could I put on
that might plug the holes,
that might seal the chinks
through which my mind goes
after you. When I read
the absurd science
of how we might one day upload our minds,
it’s Ted Williams
I'm thinking of:
his severed head,
poorly cared for
in its Kelvin crypt of absolute zero,
now cracked, now
the Splendid Splinter even in death.
And it’s that wish
to come back better
or new,
to walk out onto the pliant summers
of our best years
when we knew sex to be as easy as breath
and like the next,
assured. Love, the dark
that waits holds
answers like a winning hand
and I’ve stopped
asking. Whatever I know,
I build it as a bird
builds her fragile bowl of a nest.
And in that nest a bird sings.
Of course,
of course,
she sings to the yolk white world inside each blue egg
and for a time,
for as long as I can stand,
I listen.
2 comments:
Homophone
The sky is yolk-less; this night, an unfertilized
egg that will never hatch. And day, oh day
seems too far away to ever crack. The body,
hopeless, swaddled in sheets, shrouds itself in the dark
half. Alas, I am no moth. Even if I did possess wings,
I’d never singe them in that eternal yearning, a fool
for light. No kamikaze-ing into the flame. Instead, I’m cowered
in the street, straddling the yellow line like that possum
you didn’t hit last week, a hesitant that would neither live
nor die. Tell me whose hands scrub your back, slide
slickened with lather over your skin. Perhaps, the more apt question
begs: Whose red nails scratch? We are animals, loathe
though I am, low as I am, to own that fact. I know lust is natural,
but I am highly evolved enough to quell that urge, to deny
myself that instinct. An itch, impossible to reach from this distance.
I can’t help that I don’t see desire in every thing
like you. A bed stripped of linens, unidentifiable roadkill
—a patch of grey fur, a bone fragment, a string of gristle
or sinew—-laquered nails, wet flesh. They say—who?—that dark matter
is everywhere—here in this room, crouched in the corner,
huddled in the closet. They say—who?—that love
is as ubiquitous as grass. No moon illuminates this empty
room; and outside, the lawn is lost beneath a vast expanse of white.
I like this poem. Strong ending. Good work, superstar you.
CMR
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