Sep 13, 2009 5:30pm

september

a thousand wings beat dark of night away, halting the hands & mouths of empty city dwellers. backed to cold brown-stones I watch as orange’d bellies overhead heft toward, thrust away, come canopy of wild heaving flesh. a litany of calls break this black-night. They lure amber traffic-lights to hold their freight for only a moment more. buried deep & weak a signal is read & sung out. run. from this now.

run.

—

I lay ugly & broken beside you.

—

i course through night streets like black love & sick sweet-orange film lines the backs of my eyes. I lay some later. wound on sheet & latent violence while a river flows quiet somewhere in my eyes. sharp pain pushes from below my heart & i steal deep breaths adorning them gold with weight & meaning as though they are my last. there is no fear or regret.

—

my fingers fan out against black paved road. a river of fingers snake through & collapse into them. an unexpected joy. the trees then shake & sigh, so pregnant with cool september air. carried leaves rustle & come rhythm following footfalls. we are swallowed patient into the unknown.

—

I contort, push my back hard into ragged-rock misplaced & lined by sharp angles. I watch this sleeping city skyline. there is a rise at her shoulder. a wane at her rib. a rise at the curve of her hip. a wane at her thigh. this city lay before me. I am compelled to lay down arms. I am of her. full with ugly lightless-alleys & their lurking troubles. I am in her. a sheet of cold white covering the old stone testaments. this city neither loves or needs me. wants nor feels. remembers nor forgets.

—

i am no more with body now. no more with rolling flesh. i drive my hips into this night & knowing is with-out me. scented heaving sounds rise & fall upon me. I watch & sometimes put a hand out to them. i sometimes put hand to flesh that moves so & press into it to feel a steady pacing heart.

—

my balance wavers, slight, as i fight away & through throngs of unmarked young flesh, so fine & pinning me to this ugly wall. storming glared light & wood-sweat stench invade me. I ceaselessly count beautiful women hidden in fashions & clothed in the distance from my failing body to theirs. the long brass arm of the bar becomes a salvation line & I pull myself along it while a strobe ignites white-red against brick wall, freezing forever, three friends easy-laughing.

—

I hold fast your throat. feel air begin atop the curve of my forefinger & thumb & carry slow & steady down soft passages into all the sorrows & joys of life. I squeeze. wiggle fingertips to the pulsing. squeeze & threaten to stop the mechanics. I threaten to stop the violence of bodies coming together against one another.

—

there comes unwanted a violence against me. kneeded & broke, a scream & curl from deep ‘tween rib & fat. under dappled flesh & forgetting, a silence binds me from everything that is not of it. I take long pulls from her to soothe it. I bring knees to chest & try to drown it in scalding waters. I cover it in seed & cloth. I extend it. contract it. I cannot close it. cannot abide it & i am lost to it.

—

my weak thighs are ocean & night is shore. I break myself against her darkened lines. there is no more space to consume. no more fear to conquer. no more weakness to be shamed by. I wind & froth & curl. rail & wither. throw myself against hard rock & gritty sands coarse like goose-flesh. I have no want or need. I have no shape or meaning. I am momentarily free of all I carry ever with me. I count the lashes of her full eyelids & listen to the a howl of breaking waves. I cannot go on. I cannot stop.

—

through sharp wire, wrought steel, littered woods & scrag rock, my eye follows coursing water. follows lines of branch to leave & leave to sky & sky to water. follows gold to green & green to blue & my worries are bark breaking ugly from the branches of black spruce.

—

you take my fingers in your mouth & I watch your hips move. I am overcome.