Bones set
on concrete cannot
return to dirt.

            I could feel her, on the other side,
            calling herself in.

                        My love asked: how many times?
                        And: for how many minutes?
                        And: why didn’t you tell me?

            But I am telling you. Now.

            Then he brewed
            some tea, looked at his lap-
            top.

                        The wind outside died down,
                        a not-knowing, dissociation
                              as a non-critical practice.

            I decided to watch a film instead.
 
            I decided to watch instead, a film.

                        My deciding, a film.

                        I watched, instead, my deciding.

My body burns
in the night. Proof
of innocence is ash.

The turning of the mind
on the turning of the meat,
brain-spit.

            I want to be alone. I flash all night, ride the fire waves, fantasize cigarettes and solitary walks through the cool dark anywhere.

Captain reaches in a deep pocket and pulls a coin
affixes it to closed right eye,
half-payment
to cross.

The crowds swirl dirty, like sea grass.
In a city of abundance,
much decay.

                            (Sometimes art is the way you rake dirt
            a little seed sucked down into something somber.
            Cherish that seed and it might grow.
            Either way, it might grow)

All systems fail and it’s not the toll-violators’ fault.
Most people have stopped believing
in hell.

When put to fire.

When there is no choice, versus when the choice is
yours alone.


                It happens suddenly, the stopping.
The moon used to pull blood
with regularity of digitized church-bells.

Now heat sparks momentum,
dissipates into rain cycle,
a boiling rain.

The body listens in, like our phones,
sells us what it thinks we want, no.
The body changes, quickly, and communicates

through smoke signals,       

                                       (A stranger’s child told me he’s afraid sometimes to sleep, that the brain, he read, can’t tell if it’s about to sleep or die and that’s crazy (his words). He did not name his source. Today I’ll bake something new, unknowable. The kid legitimately looked distressed so I told him people have been dying for ages, told him I died briefly and came back under the paddles, told him a white light story, how I saw all mothers. The kid’s eyes widened, really? Yes, it happens. Has always happened, like this. I’ll buy pistachios and golden honey, good French butter, who knows what else
)

maybe melts the muscles just a little bit,
creates more flexibility, maybe toasts
the mallow of our innards, maybe chars

the edges of a biscuit, maybe honey maybe
fiery honey. The ordeal of a body, its own mind.

The belly swole with bitter water, the bursting thigh
the body’s final sound, and then the air.

We witness, change our lives.
Each of us
must change our life,

                                    stop payment.

My taxman eats
            a beef jerky.

            I feel bad

            for the cow
                                he says.

            Me too.
            A single cow eye

blinking
            from my tulip-cupped palm.