Finally writing again

Some Dark Trees

For Frankie Jay

Now that you have sound
open your radiant lungs
to the moon.
Bees rise from your chest
and become the color of light.
The lemon branches turn butterflies
into death,
and the ants fulfill their destiny
to become the coldness of the sun.

Life will be hard.
Sometimes you will be humiliated
by elephants with bleached foreheads.
Because you are discolored by the moon.
Because your brilliant shadow covers your flesh.

You watch our theatrical faces.
I long for their fondness. Their kindness.
They belong to everyone.
I understand their hard beauty.
The wounds that become them are
human creations
like wind or earthquakes.
I have already seen this in you –
that you will outlive mosquitoes.

New Poem

29

They’re cutting the flesh of the whale, the diminutive fins, the blood.
They bludgeon, without mercy, their dark torsos –
their flesh jumping like the powdered flesh of butterflies.

You used to be an animal like me,
as big as a jaguar’s left lung or a child’s palm.

Laurrèn.
How will I ever feel alive again if you have divided
the wind between your teeth;
if you have tormented the bees to suicide;
if you have taken the bronze shadows out of my mouth.
And love?
What condition does it find itself in –
like a lizard in the early evening.