Bone Species

Trace a without. Approach the cloud-cringe of angels,
                                                                                      muddy the worlds.
Do we really want to be as awake as that? Isn't that
                                                                                what fills the hospitals?
Here is the page of Old English I was picking,
                                                                         iron locks under snow.

Soon, dawn will snap out birds from eaves of these iced buildings,
the form I seek will be submerged, perhaps a mercy.

Here, look at this box of dominoes from China
made from the bones of dogs,

           (I arrange them as I wait).

Yellowed teeth, a century's nicotine and tea.
Patinated by the clever animal who learns
                                                                   nature loves her caesuras.

So this page is yours, though you do not enter;
no game materializes
                                on the immemorial table,

only the pleasure of touching cold bone. Feeling dawn slide overhead,
                                                                         heben til hrofe,
                            heaven to roof us,
                                                         as I journey backwards,
                            chase you
                                                     until you are these tesserae...

                                                     *
                            I learn
                                      an alien language that can restore you,
                   shore our pagan place of old,
                                                                   kennings,
                                                                                  keenings,

                 these isig-feora,

                                         "icy-feathered ones"

                                       It's a sleepless language, hissing
                                                 insomniac
                                                                   shore

                                                                 where you are reborn
                                                     in consonantal violence, as
                                                          sea-spray to osprey, is
                                                           desire
                                                                      to
                                                                                Love

                                                                                       (even slain

                                                    claws that snarl
                                                       water, snare

                                                                                   live-eyed-coinage
                                                                 writhing memory

                                        as cold Saxons knew

                                                                       (even slain

                 Love hunts

                                             O most mutable

                                                               and mutagenic

For Possum Tjapaltjarri

It's not polite to drive into people,
                             slow or fast.

Are you afraid our stories
                         will tarnish you?

Conscious stripes.
Conscious dots.
Do do do do dot it.

Blue waterhole at dusk.
A little mortuary painting in a small gem
has a tiny river, a chapel.

                         Darkening and birds are running
                          away, into night.

Moon copper red pigment
shines over bones elongating
                             in quick flight.

                 The edge is often traveled.
                 Waves stoke our hunger.

Blue waterhole at dusk.
A little mercury painting in a small gem
has a tiny river, a chapel.

Mnemonic mountains of me collapse.

I hope you can watch.