The birthmark spilling out Jupiter’s stomach is a magnificent
storm– a leviathan dream erupted into a nightmare, saffron ochre, bright
and bleeding like the convulsive curiosities of spirits trapped on earth.
I’m one such spirit, probing and meddlesome– I want to know
as fervently as I want to remain simple. What I mean is
that I ache to commiserate with the suspended rocks
beyond my reach, to dust a pinch of void onto my
tongue and taste its confusion, to walk along the edge
of Neptune’s Arago ring, where probabilities hang
by a dimly lit strand of bravery waiting for a witness,
willing and barefaced to offer acceptance,
and what I mean is
that I ache to stay still, to know of nothing
but what the infinite neurons flickering
in my brain like to conjure up–vermillion rain,
chortling blades of kelp, dancing and
you, you are one such spirit, adrift at city, lost
between grieving the pavement anthill’s collapse beneath
your boots and begging the clouds to relinquish their thrones
long enough to encapsulate you in their tears so that maybe
then you, or I can rest in the tender knowledge that we are
the rain, the hurricane, we are the sand, its surface
warmth, its belly bursting with a crystalline core and
we are our mothers’ mournings, our fathers’ silent thirst
for pride, raptured and impossible, we are
the fallen fig gone rotten, the starlings’ hunger
for its bruised insides, we are the wasp,
and the queen, and
the crumb
