lxxxxii.

what was lost; is lost
unable
to restore it,

she said something
was growing
deep below the asphalt

in the ground, skew to
it would rise
through the sidewalk,

in the gap of sky between
the branches,
coalescing past it what

the sky holds will not
touch it
--and she was afraid,

--she fell across the threshold
where she went, I don't know,

but I see the echo, far-off
in other place, coursing,
through the network--I see

it close up, in half-filmed eyes,
there is a tree on the flat by
the rise above the valley, it spreads

alone above the sage-brush, waving
in the wind, green and thin--it frames
the mountains; leaves flickering

like all trees, it is connected only
by its taproots, and what the water
carries to them, but in a stand,

you think they have company, what
living teaches are further examples, what
words are--

--can be carried where words are, even
where they are unexpected, like
water, like wind--they navigate courses

and small expanses, broadly.

what you remember until you know it
will crack on other memory
remembered until it is unknown

carried forward--and what you hope for
new, will snarl in other
new things that are still unknown,

moving sideways, will unravel as it
grapples with what should not be,
because it claims to be finished and whole.

ishmael (ii)

if you are overwhelmed by the tide
and sink to the depths, in
the shadows

take comfort in the fact history
is held by many hands

I carved your name into the skyline
at the cadence of the peaks, rising
and falling--and into the doorframes

where people pass, and hurry to the
next thing, and you carved mine

into the asphalt, along the tree-tops
in the glass,
and someone else will carve

the names of the others, elsewhere.

the immense clutter of eyes is our horror
and salvation, a glyph and a cipher

there is no one so small that they will be forgetten
none so great that they can resist dissolution

ishmael (i)

somewhere between where it's too dry for a joshua tree
and where the sage rises in clusters, and
where the winter stream-beds carve across the plain,

I left something by a rise in the road.

the crack in the window, lets in the wet night air,
it's hard to describe the view
out over the tree-line, cut by the walls

it's difficult to inscribe a window
onto a wall and open it,
in the distance

and the world exists in rooms we pass through,
or carry with us, walls,
the streets clogged with hallways and the

occasional creak of a door, a

whisper of a scent from elsewhere, but
windows are rare,

rooms rushing past each other, in flight
at haste

the lightning shatters across the basin,
flashes across the walls,

the glass thuds against the frame,
and shudders,

below the inky hills, the wind eddies
and the stars gleam
heedless and scattered, above the road

headlights blazing, somewhere, in the dark
higher across the slope

of those who came back--most did not remember
and some could not describe--
what they had seen before

lxxxxi

the hollow men, are surely
no more

--standing in a circle--

are surely no more than the
echo of the unholy howl

sitting at the depths, of a
hollow people,

made empty, they see the
reflection of their lack

and scream with
the rage of recognition,

reeling, to fill their depths, they
do not understand that

we are made in circles, they reach
wildly to stop the flow of

all the things running through them
to catch and rot within them

lxxxx.

the lanterns swing, wildly
light falls across

the cobbles, shatters against
the wall--you know it

doesn't matter.

they say, with erudition, that the
father, sometimes

consumes the son.

the permafrost leaking, below the
power station, arcing

the pylons: against the dark,
proclaim a new age, promise

to burn the time, arcing,
cackling in the coils

the ground bleeding
beneath them, but they will

die in folios, diagnostics falling
to dark, the diagrams backlit

by a screen somewhere in the
other world, their only epithet,

there's some places, they say with
such erudition where the

son consumes his father, but--
the lanterns swung,

and shattered. the fall--

swirls, soft and chill
between the trees,

flicks leaves across the alley
between the buildings

the lamps flickering, the half
lit haze, and the dark-line

of the stream, the doors spilling
light into the shadow--it

wasn't enough, the hush and
the shuddering possibility,

what's the point in saying anything,
when the people to come

will be just
as they are now? and if they aren't:

just as easily broken, or dissolved

the walls blaze. the sorghum,
the slopes, the frost,

the tide bleeds, crawls up to
the shore burning--it won't

--the wind rushes between
the cliffs, guttering--

be enough.

you had better burn your
ghosts--before they eat you.

lxxxix

somewhere, between the halls where

the powerful walk, and the

streets where they scream for power

scuffed by so many footprints

the truth lies, head bowed, rests

for a moment, and rises—

running--

there’s a world of men who would

make of the world a hallway

to walk down, who would shoot

hallways across the buildings,

through the houses, cut their

avenues from the alleys

build their streets through and from

the lives of others,

so there’s nowhere they cannot tread

the truth flees before them—wild-

eyed, cast itself sideways

if you should meet me in the alley,

and you promise me you are no maker

stoop and help me track its traces,

in the dust and refuse,

if you see a flicker of motion, sideways,

that is the mark of its passing

walk the trail with me, quietly

through the leeside,
we will go slowly together

lxxviii.

the churches of the unwieldy

are scattered across the street

buried in office buildings, along

the gutter thick with leaves,

the parking lot at the edge of the light

the churches of the unwary rise high, or

low, thickly bricked,

with bricks or chatter, sometimes choked

with song—

the churches of the weary are no church

that we have yet seen, are passed

invisible, in pieces, from hand to hand

carried in the eyes, and the brush

of two passing, slowly, in the street