If my
body is my home
what is this house full of blood
within my skin? I can’t leave it for a moment
but finally will. It knows up and down, sideways,
the texture of the future and remnants of the past.
It accepts moods as law to matter how furtively
they slip in and out of consciousness.
He says, “Pull yourself together,”
but he already is. An old voice
says, “Stay close to
home.”
It is
hard not to see
poets as penitentes flaying
their brains for a line. They have
imaginary tattoos that can’t be removed.
They think of themselves as mental Zorros riding
the high country while far below moist and virginal señoritas
wait impatiently in the valley. Poets run on rocks barefoot when
shoes are available for a dime. They stand on cliffs but not
too close to the fatal edge. They have examined their
unfamiliar motives but still harvest the
wildflowers they never planted.
The horizon has long since
disappeared behind
them.
They
have this idea
that they have been cremated
but aren’t quite dead. Their ashes are eyes.
At night the stars sprinkle down upon them like salt.
At noon they are under porches with the rest of the
world’s stray and mixed-breed dogs, only
momentarily noticed, and are never
petted except by children
and fools.
The flesh
endures the storms of the
present alone, the mind those
of the past and future
as well as the
present.
“This is
a myosin protein
dragging an endorphin along a
filament to the inner part of the brain’s
parietalcortex which creates happiness.
Happiness. You’re looking at
happiness.”