Wordwork

“Wonderous strange.” “Yonder” and “woe.”

Phrases you secretely hoped someday to speak. Words you’ve stupidly neglected.

They slipped right by. Where were you looking?

But sometimes one finds you

from far, far away. The two of you meet then in some near-by middle

and the result is not really thought and not feeling exactly.

A moment out of dense flowing time.

A single bitter sparkle of agonized coal

which attends you and you

attend it. Aural glitter. Satin intelligence.

Nothing will cut it. It cuts.

Hold. Holdness. Fast. Fast held.

Midst and gist. Thick of it. Think

of it. Where does the pressure come from?

From itself. Can’t think. Can’t think about that. Fast.

*

Let’s see; am I touting, yet again,

mad inspiration? that same old notion

of words finding us?

Oh, they’ve probably come from ourselves all along,

though by the time they finally arrive,

they just seem to have travelled forever.

Winding paths, after all, go on and on.

That’s how winding paths work.

And that of course too is how the body thinks:

a coiling movement of words

on their way to the mouth or the fingers or the eyes

and then again back down, though up and down are relative,

especially for the body, so really what we’re saying, as always,

is all at once and all the time everywhere here.

*

Man, if I could just undress myself of my mind,

I could finally wear my body, I think, well enough. I know how to choke.

I know how to breathe

when I have to. The body’s a great farmer of words—

or rather, the body churns words. It’s right in the middle of things, it’s in the midst.

That’s how it works.

If I could wash myself of the mind,

I’d happily weep away whatever years I have left.

I’d feast on essential contradictions.

*

Did you know the heart does math?

Like a motherfucker.

But of course the heart counts funny. It counts but it can’t

add up. It adds and adds

while subtracting into infinity

at the exact same time. That must be why it beats

in pain. That must be why it beats.