After Thrashing About, But Not Violently
I have tried to write paradise.
The words have faded, so have the author
and the artist who copied them with colored
pencils.
Sounds of objects hurling through space
flickering lights from the dark matter
of remembrance.
Who’s to say that my thought,
occurring at this moment, can’t be
yours
from light-years ago?
You filmed me jumping puddles under the
neon lights
of 42nd street. “What is that?” frowned
the Japanese dancer.
“What is she doing in your film?”
Time is a sequence of brutal insults to
the mind. No?
The ladder is broken at its waist, the
sound of bells
from the ocean floor, yellow crystals filtered
through the air.
I dreamt I sat on a frozen lake, searching
through the mist for a tree. Behind me
you loomed
on tiptoes, the moon casting our shadows
towards the shore.
The notion that not everything has to
make sense—
this could be a mask for my lack of taste,
intelligence.
How should I find solace in such ambiguity,
such stubbornness?
The wind still blows within the frame,
this way, that way, this way again.
Let those I love try to forgive what I
have made.
Words reel in loops—an invisible
shuttle combing my warped hair.
Let’s make a scandal.
Let’s embrace as if there were no
tomorrow.