WORK / INK ON PAPER / TIER 2022
Life, is that you?
you’re knocking hard.
Awesome stridings and chasms
— you have that. You enchant.
You frighten with black
mountains—with twisted
filaments—papillae—hard hoofs
antennae and gills and corollas.
Nights plummet down
black blue at times with stars
with drops—and crouched
brindled slippery births.
How all is mystery. And a
general riot of mouths
—eating, getting eaten—
as plant life pumps
its lymphs.
As it calmly kneads itself
into a new tangle.
As it throws its seed
out to the future — the small,
faithful locket repeating the shapes
the colour the juice. As it pushes up
new shoots. Returning
intelligent shoots
toing and froing and floating.
Silence, is that you?
it’s you coming —
your heartbeat through the nocturns.
It’s you silence
dripping and spreading
out of all the caves
of your black birth.
What fright—
It’s you healing silence.
In these peaks these corollas
you crouch
and breathe wide—
and luminous abide
in petals in stems
in animals’ eyes.
In the air full of eyes.
So much silence — here.
Powers accrue
in your coils—silence.
All that is beauty is crouched in
your folds. And slowly sprouting
it spins, spins its thread, spins a hush —
and you marvel of silence
your nothingness cresting and rearing
you carry inside animals’ voices
the rustle of treetops
the howl of volcanoes
of the earth.
You carry the germ of the word.
You brood the word
you lick it slowly you drink it
without knowing as yet
if you’ll push it into our throats
or make of it but song. Only only
song now. Only song now.
Song shout and silence. Only.
