“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

The universe slumped in a hammock off Bay Street,

devising ingenious new ways to break my heart,

her robe parting suggestively at her forked and dangling legs.

Between the serene hammock and the storm-gashed spasm of rock where we
cowered as if shipwrecked, certain figures moved into light while others
retreated — they appeared to be elderly women opening and closing side doors
on a long hall diminished by shrinking hooded kerosene lamps.

I did not say it three times; Air, please open, and the air opened.

None the less, we suddenly stood before the hammock and waited to be
acknowledged like self-effacing butlers, which is the proper attitude for
sneaking up on a languishing universe.

Her heart must be approached slowly,

with folded hands, as one approaches a skittish frog,

high dive or declaration of love.

But this is just the beginning, dark lights in Club Rain. Savannah night.

A metaverse in repose can also be a reflecting pool, so I doled out tobacco
and leaf, sat Indian style around the hammock and admired ourselves French kissing and
inhaling.

My loves have proclaimed that mirrors hold their most cherished images
subsurface even when ruffled by wind, shattered by hurled candlesticks, or
un-silvered by time; and each day we discover new things about which
lovers were right when we thought they were lusty vixens.

It was strange that she never changed colors; the tiny husks of phantom
dolls did amass on dark club benches — these were the components of our
new destruction, insofar as we could divine them from the rustling scrolls
of their ancient voices chanting into me.

Whether graven coals with a stylus of iron or impressed upon flesh with a
fingernail, the imbricate after-images of her manifesto, described through
the dimming of variously colored veils, persisted long after their immediate
utility slipped into the abyss between each word in the inscription.

The universe put its hand beneath the unfolding robe and she writhed obscenely,
head falling back, and dark hair cascading in ecstasy.

The sky within was flat and glossy like a photograph of water, centrally
pinioned by two gigantic hands knitting the heavens with worry.

Over the universe’s wild and bucking head, the Divine Barber stropped his
razor and entire epochs drifted into anonymity like beard trimmings.

Jets of steam and the silhouettes of languidly turning propellers obscured her red, flowered beauty, and
all visions.

By the seething radiator, a man who was mainly a dense system fingered his
lungs anxiously.

My lover clucked and hurled her fishnet stockings with startling
dexterity.

Air hissed from my heart deflating.

Attribute the indigo color of blue trees to the blue bird holding you so tight.

I negotiate with myself & low lamp light lithe the backdrop of candles lit,

swinging gently near your head.

Envy me because I’m not a ghost.

Along the scrim, you close in  on the slow,

deliberate hand blackening electricity,

I wear you as a night light, a beacon.

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