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Another breath and the Earth stung by a taunted slope pulling the sky apart - these graves are useless though your fist once splashed the ground the way a stone is needed opens your hand as hillside and roads that know why you're here sitting on a bench half marble half in the open, defenseless smelling from dirt and distances that only inhale and you are brushing someone's face before it reaches bottom - what more do you want! a close together that knows where you're going that brings you air to take along letting you call it by its name. * This handrail sealed, kept hot for engine oil and holding on looking for help though not yet into the turn as your hand on your shadow bolted down at the water's edge - you make the descent the way a hidden stream stretches out and the ground lets go, cooling your fingers in drops, in a heaviness in more and not more. * You test each hole for winter mixed with seawater and from a single fingertip someone near is counting as if the sky is lit by campfires and overflowing that harden into sand not yet a path for thirst and gravel needs footsteps that can tear down a mountain just to move you further and under its darkness - you dig, want so little room no garden, no winding rivers that slowly come to a stop as if this time you could go to bed without the radio on covering you arm in arm - you hear your finger bleed crushed under some rock floating by to shut out the cold and from your shoulders the words though your mouth is empty longing for dirt, lifeless taken ashore here somewhere. * Your shadow spreads across the way this hillside once it catches fire cools half molten rock, half your usual breakfast, no plate no table, just a few hours boiled in beach grass and the smell mornings once gave off -you are always lost, moving things an arm, a foot, until the air is bitter, has no salt, no smoke - nothing's left in you - even if you want to be alive this darkness will call you back is already reaching up, swollen from emptiness and your throat opened for paving stones you don't know how to narrow down. * Shielding your lips this stone knows all about winds living in caves, began as dust then kept in place neither mornings or kisses though there's still the pieces a grave here, here more and you trying to remember how dirt became your cheeks, caressed as if rain is just another word - your only sky left in the open for its handfuls and hidden flowers that have forgotten how to breathe are devouring the mud, mountains and this ritual water swept away. |