What Passes Between

David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

--I Samuel 16:23

1. David

In darkness, I send each wavelength

        into the glitch        in a shuttered

brain. In reeking sheets, the king

    eats God's    amphetamine.

He tracks the camera's eye, feeling

    for informants,    trip-wires,

testing the air for traps. Beside him,

    my hands    bend notes

of carnelian & pericardium, of blessed

    flaws    mending

and mending the jagged seam, feeling

    as he un-    stitches it again.

2. Saul

I know a stuck channel, I know

    a sentence    that ends

and ends. All I was I learned

    in bonemeal,    in dampened ash:

how night sifts though, how day

    pales,    and a boy

is a piece of the darkness.

    Before,    I tried

to find what your mind was after

    but it only tore    my voice

in two. Here, in your echoes,

    I paw,    I err—

and it's like a little dance, a ritual

    to reveal    the way

each answer only cuts the music

    out of me,    shuts its lips,

and begins to make it pay.