For Now

The roof caves in and that old goof I used to know

climbs freely down through the damage hello.

The main thing I notice about this man from the sky

is his head. The top of his head

sort of doesn't stop, it grows upward up and up, but only as

I look at it. And the more I look the more it grows

in swirls and lights, and in

the swirls and lights are swirls

of swirls and inside those are little girls

jumping rope, the kind with the long, long rope

between two good friends—who are also, in little girldom,

ferocious enemies—on their appointed sides.

When those two rope-controllers get the rhythm

right (their song, the rhythm of the rope, and the spaces inside

the rhythm of the rope); when ferocious enemies

suddenly, dismayingly discover

they're in perfect agreement,

well then a third

party can jump in dancing, and always did. Or does. I don't know

what tense I mean. The songs

are all gone, but I at least remember the beat.

I recall my own feet leaving

the ground…

I'm starting now to remember some stuff. Playground things,

inbetween the rope-beats, you might say, but I don't want

to remember anything

at all just now. Not that groovy blond wire-rimmed glasses

boy with the famous big brothers,

who never made it into my space (Don);

and not the one who did (Ron), offering via messengers

a religious thing for my neck,

and who then, without my asking or wanting,

approved of my clothes—

Oh gee thank you ronald freeman I'm so grateful fuck off

(who wants to go steady? I wanted to go, all right,

but not at all steady)—

but I was talking about a man

who climbed down from the sky, just now. The one whose head is full

of flashing and beating,

mind flaying itself which is why

I want to call him Father

or Now,

and his damnable skull so sore

from dutiful girls all learning to fit.

Mable and her table and the stuff

on her table—Ug!

to air, to air, I loved to get my feet

off the ground, though every space I leaped

up into was only a space

to fall back through

to earth though if I look

and look towards the top of his head—

which in fact keeps growing as I'm looking keeps growing—

I see I see

finally, that pinpoint of light that I never made

or make. Neither father nor brother nor friend.

Neither air nor ground.

Neither Don nor Ron.

And neither side of enemy lines.

Nor lyric space nor narrative drive.

Whatever it is

(its twinkling makes me crazy because it's not actually twinkling

or so fast it's actually not),

I can't imagine or remember or jump

any further.