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 modality 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.