A line arrives in the shower so
I dictate it to Siri. It’s sinister

but twee. To use language as a mask
for what I really want to say I slant it

certainly. Sun beheads the lemon
tree the pomegranates too are bare

and all terraces in city shade like
my mind is shade. Vortices upon

voices demand my collapsing into
like old light vanished over the event

horizon of Sagittarius A* the center
of our existence the pupil of an eye

is modeled after it planets and stars
just flecks of contrast in some immense

iris brown or blue. Poetry too slips
into oblivion but we don’t forget

such perennial companionship. I want
to say that friendship its palpable

gravity is what keeps us grounded.
Friendship quiet and far I crossed

now and then into dark dynamic
unfeeling oracular head I obsessed.

O itself it must expire limb from limb
fixation from friend rent.

A fragment or figment of it’s easy to
talk to ghosts who reappear bidden

or not bidden idea of soul among gods
read: guilt I’ve let them lapse let live

archivally like kouroi a broken string.
Scrawl of wings arc through cool spring air

like so many mythologized men no
matter how numinous nor famous of name

no matter the river crossed nor what
was sung nor to whom or what to call

what undergirds it all shelterless gang
enmeshed in disquietudes sun descends

like an apology for what revealed.
To imagine in work the image of I

to choose the way the singer died.
These years and days for work

to inspire work that’s the thing.