The Mathematics Of Blood In The Veins

The earth tells you
its words,
the puppet show
is the bell
you ape,
the light against
paper;
and it’s always a unique
routine.

This song goes on and tells you
the long story
you ape,
and it remarks
on itself
within the trees
what happened without light,
without paper, without an engine,
and without
shadows.

Then they give you
pills that
put
your muscles to sleep,
they run
blue dye
in the river of
your blood. Take
pictures of your organs.
It is
the mathematics
of
blood in the veins, these pictures,
the slow retiring of your mind,
the song ribboned
out in your body
like a parade, your
dance is
alive
inside of
this still, x-rayed body, man.
It won’t stop. It will not
stop until you do, which only takes a
a moment. Beep.

When a woman
marries
a man
she always seems
to marry his
death.
You amazing feathers, you, father,
you amazing tall being,
like Emily
Dickinson
turned to a weed on the prairie
in a cat’s eyeball
sliced right
down
the middle, her
feathers
blown
away in the bright wind.

The streetlights
made them, they made your words,
they brought us the snow and the wind,
they brought us the shapes, and the light, and that,
those pieces
altogether
that made up the reef of this city, its
inhabitants
enfolded
in inventions.

Meanwhile, you
continue to
circle the house,
haunt your own chair,
adjust the
thermostat
again and again for
ages,
eat and guzzle
of your own guts perpetually,
a fork in one hand and the
eyeballs
searching for what?
Your drink, your dick, your
wife.

Blood moving toward something,
through your withered
veins, oxygen
opening
the dark wings
of your lungs,
long-haired like
prehistoric Ice Age bats.

It is the light
and it is
the soundless. You go into it,
and it finds you.
Do you know the man
of my father?

I look ahead to numerous seasons, how they will
spread
in latitudes
across the faces
of everyone I know,
the bridges and the rivers they cross,
closets opening in winter, in the
hallways
minutiae,
in the sands of the
deserts.
I will walk through them for this brief time,
and then they will close, like they
closed on you.

The mice and rats
have been
scratching
inside of the walls
all night, and the
ceiling—
they remind me
of the years
and how they
run
in the walls, how
they lubricate the
brick and the stone.
The glue
that keeps
nails in studs, bones
in flesh, two people together.

You amazing
toothless mouth, you noose,
you amazing father,
and you are mother too.