The Only Thing That Matters

Otherness and a Wilderness

Otherness and a Wilderness 3 I had always planned to live on the run, now I’m a stranger running to you alone— the last great expert standing, red. You who argues for nothing and bows to nothing and wears energy and feathers— such fountains of light —and who finds the hidden surprises between home and heaven. 4 Your name in my mouth feels cold and ordinary—like inhaling something frozen through the phone. Go— now that you have a job. Anyway, I aspire to be poor, living in seedy quarters and to forget my place the way a mast might mid-sea you’ll have years to be alone. 5 A mirror held up to your homeland reveals otherness—a hardened people with a taste for bread and a taste for freedom. Some lay their faith in the sacred. Others exchange faith for fever—for the right to bear arms is intrinsic to that space between test and success—between take back or wait— 6 A child was born to us— all mouth, small hands, and now my will is like rain— the secret design of the sea. I’ll forget hardships, the worm inside and concentrate on kindness because she’ll be afraid sometimes of that dark place with no name. 7 Socialism exists far away in an abstract place that proves the poverty of mathematics and magic. I make wild leaps of thought or little leaps called prayer. Held back by a cardinal’s red designs in winter. 8 After months in the hills of Palestine, you returned with lovely lines new toasts over old wine. Across that great hole which divides— say my name, no—fall here: I know now never to say goodbye. 9 Humanity has been struggling so long I’m tired. I want to inhale the cold and wake from all this suffering, smile discover the old guard gone and earth’s creatures singing—big and knowing! Tell me, friend, when the party’s over will history still oppress us? 10 The consensus is: life is magic or a panic of interpretation. The gist’s in a spin. Ordinary speech seems like a sin and so does certainty— since earth’s own emotions aren’t complete. A child once offered this: Home is where the secret is. Then she disappeared into god’s dark woods. 11 Now that your skin is out of reach, the distance is hell and bliss— a siesta in a wide blue mist. So far, I’ve had too much faith to make a scandal or be gone. So far everything’s been you. Some may argue the logic of father the poetry of exile. Causality. Penalties. The mathematics of . . . But I know better than to go on speaking. A buzzard circles there taking stock. 12 Abiding in the spoken is like concluding that politics is the master plan. Somebody’s word is just another’s law— a wall with no visuals. The process multiplies like stars or spiders. Today my mouth said goodbye but without the color, without the suffer. 13 I leap from logic, fear any space where a violin tune can’t where the blues can’t go and tell the sad truth: some hope for perfection through evolution, but I loathe the sublime. It’s impotent and far— a star with a heart of stone. 14 Time to recognize we’re all mutants a million miles from Eden and now the phone’s out. Obsolete as it is—morality is the only hold on home— the one place where someone has patience walls are considered good company for a recluse, just as gravity is for killers and politicians: brothers finessing each other. Leave your innocence at the threshold. Unfasten your facts and make the connection— if we were all created equal why is someone always trying to get even? 15 The ocean rolls over and shines. Radiant love doesn’t die— just disappears— ordinary clouds, the sun behind. A fountain of failures makes the fall from grace heavy with words like unable and ache. But I know, like a child, the joy of surprises. And...