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Dan Raphael |
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i Was in, Then Escaped something silky descends as if the ceiling melts as if white-out or custom-fit cotton yearning to return to southern sun that bright as sleep in these clothes so thick around a radio sings without breathing like a drumstick attached to my chest on a pedal spring frozen in a dollop of lime flavored amber im as decisive as car doors choosing who will ride, where they'll leave as if a door between each of my ribs set to burst with oversized carry-ons not woven but generated cause we couldnt stand a naked world. like being on the moon-its vastness causing everything in me to cluster so tightly i implode, making one more micro crater as each blemish on a face is an incomplete vision a story i start before i realize i don't know the sudden cliff below for we do not heal as quickly as ponds where entire speeches are less than a minute of rippling consequence like the cargo plane that fell into the monongahela & was never found so much mud accumulated in places i didn't know i could contain i tell the mirror what to show me the window pulses with the moment like a thin skinned neck- glass wouldn't stretch that way like a large bowl of water rising without bubbles, rising like a space ship reflecting the land below it is a body nestled in natural sheets flowing among the hummocks walking while bent sideways to read the reflections like winding a watch until it opens with intricate music pulled randomly from a round metal jaw trying to bite through its own momentum- not a lawn mower but a form of distribution, of homogenization giving everyone enough information to decide they need a wider choice--- grass on the sides of trees, grass engulfing trees. hitchhiking between bird toes as they fly through the low transparent sheet that tells me im here, im okay, i need to get going before the sky engulfs my feet How Many how many days to finish this breath combing over the bald spots of oxygen shaved clean when the snow melts rock paper grows over faces of moss and appetite im not falling im already asleep-- breakfast swallowed the table, a dozen yaks gnawing beneath the sink view plumbing as a river, the canyons cracking our streets then fusing the woods with five simple dance steps we count on the hands sprouting from each split rib as if moisture was a language and not the grammar within wherever i cut myself rain begins to well the shadow of someone crossing the street six stories above me the structure seems random, drawing bits from micro-turbulence, young windows unable to reveal what filled them to forget a coin with a desert on one side, mountains on the other, several faces appearing through the metal to enprism my eyes where the metal would not go, til i hear the stories copper stole from electricity we stole from time's river floating like the music in a bird not yet born i cant drive without the radio tuned to daytime stars across a state of suspended fashion im camouflaged so i seem larger than what i drive-- a pterodactyl pregnant with clear oil, oil the earth never touched, the oil of accumulated souls waiting for the earth to grow over again scooped from miles below and thrown on top as a garnish of green matter so flying space worms will crash through more compost than we can accumulate i swallow eggs whole; i eat oranges without piercing the skin gravity focussed in the donuts missing center is a lens to shape my face around, a splendid head you can never see all the sides of no matter how origamic the mirror holds water then flies away on a river of light anticipates a thickening future of meat music & infatuation: smoothing the veinless leg, the undigested & uncatalogued with a hand that has another thousand miles to migrate before it touches down like a city replaced with a circus tent we all thought someone else was raising the poles for: trees refused to surrender soon enough birds have landed to smother us with our scientific sky, our multi-user managed-density sky. parts fall off and grow into hunger fractions waiting for commands in their own language locked inside the library we forgot to find keys for |