Orange Crush

I.

Too much love
is what I told her,

final aversion
apparent,

meek defenses
compromised.

Too much love was
simple subterfuge,

for our committed,
for the paltry minutiae

of repentances
made.

We were child soldiers
near of the inside

world
bent on outsider

forces, we could
upend the failure

of warfare with
an eyelash bat.

Too much love
is what I needed,

my deathbed
window blanched

in sky; illuminations
clearing the years,

charnel house shock
soon to come.

We were kidnapped and
wired in an old code,

blind born the shallow
mouthed, ready to meet

everyday dearth
coping;

as there might be
a peak of time.

Too much love
was something I said,

dripped vocals on a
worn journey,

maybe we dreamed
our civility bereft.

Maybe it was
her song –

Were sons,
were daughters,

neither Families
given over well

before we sat
uncomprehending

a system is not
allowed to stand.

II.

What had we for language in their
extending names tested everything wrong.
Outwardly deracinated aboard our simplex
twang, its reflection turned
sour and got tight when fulfilled
by twisting fits of sun.

Granting open palmed at dawn
I was carefully dried for red soot and currency,
hanging clauses to sit out each argument
we thought we learned first within our feet.

Music was motion of music from memory
skull tripped imagery a bare wee chested limbo
it was a hard breath for each broken stanza
fractioned across our laps like leggings
we couldn’t see.

III.

My notes from
the time:

Sustained as with
false sugar and with salt.

We held up our
necks, then cast

down teeth.

My only
commentary, now:

Having little
to teach,

she had less
than patience.

Other days ended
as a period apiece.

Looking for pairs
we only sold

each other,
one and one and

one night we did
too long,

division.

The story’s cold;

Offing no bodies,
on fiddles

hissing aloud
grown hearses

as a mystery
process.

What passages
opened up to alchemy,

we had any
besides

the unimagined,
rebound up

from sea drums
too far below.

IV.

Too much love
is not what

I wholly wanted
in the bargain

for her plain
demonstration.

It was better
to be done

by something
else’s verb.

Mine were
already blood

and promised
to another

as yet shorn
of their staccato

speech,

existent only
as a sickness,

and ignorant
to hermetic

writings
rendered

clean,
acoustically,

if quickly
cured, and

suddenly
shallow.