Violin

The bow flies up, then hangs aloft and floats.

The quiver just before she starts the piece;

The heart wants heat, the heat wants heart’s industry.

My stomach sparkles in the dark, a gem

Of glory glory, fingers tapping secrets,

The floorboards creaking silky silence out.

I roll my program into a telescope

To find the constellation born of doubt,

Perturb the craters of the sometimes moon—

The bow descends, a falcon to the kill.

And now I’m back at the bottom of the sea,

A diver who begs the shimmering dark to light

The way to the end of all of his beginnings.

A diver who loves his weights a bit too much.

I see a Stranger sleepwalking home (or where?)

Her purple swirls adrift — Anemone, tell

My restless mind the reason we caress.

Or else carress carress, it’s for the best.

Divine what’s variation and anomaly, please,

For I can’t speak myself into history.

Only what is wriggling, writhing, and squirming

Will dance these ancient currents into relief,

Make space and time the darlings of my blood.

The Stranger speaks: I know it would be great

To have a hand reach out and hold yours tight

And carry you into the black, the raptures

Of the deep, your head aglow, those tongues of doom

No longer licking all about your face.

It’d be great, too, if I had hands to give.

Instead, take solace since the sea is Yes

And thank you, all are welcome in my arms.

There’s nothing wrong with drifting peacefully

Into dark heaven, thinking of Chekhov’s moonlight—

Beauty is there, and for the first time

in a long time, you needn’t look away.

A bubble rises up before me, heading

For the King of Shadows. I am surprised

To follow, though in my own time. And now

I'm one pure thing, a bubble in the flux,

I know what I am doing—I am Sense.

And now she slowly lifts the bow away.

I lost the song by digging for it here

In the bosom of a rotten mind aswell

With loss and rank derision. I should steal

The goddamn thing. I'll wait outside her door

And yank it from her hands. The thing of joy

Will show me what I missed. I'll shake it out!

Or else Anemone was the song I heard—

I never see it as it is, a breath

receives another breath, an ocean yields

Unto the stars reflections of a dream;

And I attend the masters in between.