Do you remember that famous Christian book about cults?
On the cover spun rainbow waters in a down-drain spiral —
On the cover spun rainbow waters in a down-drain spiral —
America the melting pot, or, an oil slick was in our sink but it’s going away!
What were we doing on the rim of it?
What was I doing, learning how subtle variations in the gradient out
from pure light all end in the same darkest gone-away?
We were prodigies of collapsing space
forgetting pipes to waterways covering two-thirds
of a planet made just for men, who don’t swim far.
We were forging the ways our bodies go as minds move —
that is, self-limiting, or, why I can’t now unfold all
the crushed wax-paper skies above regions I belatedly see.
The weight of our bones in the world is decided early.
And even as I’ve strained to widen my eyes
for the dim of unholy wilderness I know
the being-in-it feeling is no known quantity of light.
Others muscle in pressing-going through the friction-real;
I stay thin air, where solid things vanish.
