may you never realize you are as cold as this
eyes of expectant crystal cups unfilled
wanting as if wanting were all we knew to want
snowfall on bloomed petals
and blazing reflections
of sun on ice
sustenance deflected by unseen stratum
visible only at the sharpest angles
diamond blindness
you pass averting your gaze from our glare
may you never realize you are as cold as this
are we firewood?
are we fags?
covetous
stripped rags?
match stick, match girl
are we the stories you tell yourself to know you are safe?
the space that allows for wanting
wanting as if wanting were all we knew to want?
hot bodies tumbling in a frosted bell jar
unseen, irreproachable
time is at a standstill
each moment moves at survival’s pace
frozen in bestial eternity
breeding
poor breeding
poor
poverty is breeding
out like unbearable hoarfrost needles
stitching multiplicity to barren stone
even the air is breathless
emptiness solidifies
(I have watched) the clouds
turn to bones and grow heavy
dropping to the ground to be gnawed
by relentless dogs
this does not mean we are rising
like a dovelike
bone last leg eggshell ivory
feather pale,
green is the ColorOfFire
ascension of smoke
or maybe there is just a way grass has
of seeming to burn
beyond the barrier you keep
fortressed the flame in glass castles
filling open our open mouths, expectant crystal goblets
with numb
clinking cubes
of ice
your poverty is tasteless
and you offer it as a banquet
let us eat it easy as grass
burns
may you never realize
you are as cold
wanting as if wanting were all you knew to want
reaching as if always to be reaching
the substance of desire is immobile
fixed, immense, glacial
bearing down with the weight of birth
caught immortally in labor’s pain
pressing always
forward amassing exponential gravity
on its imperceptible journey
sculpting the visage of the world