Bright Existence

Branch, Scraping

Branch, Scraping —In the almost city of new joy you lay awake. Open up dark me, you said (having waited), part that lives on the inside of statues holding those poses half-covered with reverse dust, part that barely lives, open up open up open up, you said, (because you knew how much activity lives in the night, the rats, thrumming and thrumming their violin ways up the sides of dawn, new roses climbing up the edge of fiddle this and fiddle that) And the dark me said I can't come right now let me put on further shadows I am a torn thing— The dark boys were wakeful so you asked them The sad boy the mad boy the see-you-later sailors sailing backward track marks under their tans husbands of people brothers of people the wild boy the spinning man the dream pirate who loved night so well he had to stir tomorrow in his coffee . . . There was a branch scraping so you blamed it, its thorns advanced by little yellow roses. Civilization was scraping so you blamed it (tearing the female from himself and the male from herself; there was a branch scraping between worlds so you blamed it and the day people slept on their thoughts, the branch scraped midnight because the noon ones slept. 82. So o.k., maybe it. Maybe nature wasn't always such a good mom. Maybe she was sick of doing whites in her laundry. Maybe she was a he— (Try this sentence backward : he a was she maybe) Dirty boy-boy. Raccoons searched through the garbage can, pulling out chicken bones, live sandwiches, the little bloody pad of black black purple-black black female blood —What did he want that for, his eyes were ringed with it— and the owl did its four note call from ahead of the wrinkled moon: (dirty) who-who . . (dirty) who-who . . . Branch scraping. Branch scraping again. It made the sound of missingness, like you. It made the sound of tiny eiffel towers on their sides. But was it the dark girl or the dark boy self you were missing. Doesn't matter what it was about. Dirty moon-moon. Little drugged missionary stars came out. So you took their advice and stayed awake in half as in a tunnel where you are the only one going the opposite way, —not so yellow, not so open,— you come out and the trees have split between the past with its type of fire and the future with its, you can burn through one sweet branch at a time, you can gather up the branches with your large large heart but you're not going to be one thing, ever again— 83 ...