Finite Weapons
For Kam
I
We will to crack up time
We will to split the sound
Bound bloodlessly
Our meadows overgrown. At last!
Our searing fingers have met the chill
Of the other, searching,
That despite this, us, it searches still.
II
As you are,
Agape and lockjaw broken,
a splendid mess of cracking joints and steam
supine on the linoleum frost
sweeping gazes through me, it seems.
To wonder at your open wounds,
Yours, a spell unbinding
This yet shallow knocking on the door,
Is to summon here your rotting haunts
To know it all and ever more.
Those who cross this into here,
A needle painted line along the edge
As red as the hidden iron tracks
Roaring along the underside of your forearm
Are promised a baker’s dozen,
Twelve open fires illuminating
This shallow grave in which we await the last,
our covenant with dust.
But you, your will aside,
Move me as a sudden stream, seeping
Latent light, soft and aquiline
Into the corners of my cage.
III
Here is the birth of our well, curls of water unfurling
Here is the virgin earth between us, consecrated
We are helpless
From living to live, enchanted gestures, survival
Half conscious and hastily carved into segments of flesh
To this, that I was once promised,
In a fairy story, a timespun tale
This, the cave of shadows drafted through with flame
The bones as kindle
For the fire this time ours.
IV
As I am,
I could not make this up
This, I remember:
The starving beast in languor at once
At the twining of our fingers
Steepled in prayer, as one gilded plume
of scented smoke rising
to another above;
the mourning of fossils disinterred
Leaving their quivering echoes of pain
In the beyond of where we have been;
The oath renewed, brimming
with sleeping tears
now holy by their shared shedding;
The tender projections,
Eyelid films
Of the desperately banal and
Movingly simple;
This i remember,
Though not of a memory, but yet
Of a thing recognized.
V
Now, when we dare the trudge to the next mirage
Now, where we lay our bruised arrows and stones
Is here, whispers wetly, an open oasis
That none other but we
May taste of each other,
For a lapse in the swing of this blue moon
For a knot in timelessness,
We pardon these unlovely things
For they know not what they choose.
