it's not - it can't be
yet somehow is
we laugh but shy, as if someone adult
might take it from us -
the moon perhaps, though she's allied
to lovers, traditionally - or some lurker,
hedged, patient, primed to spring
we both carry that fear bonewise,
running the body's rivers
seared in the deep red meat of us
how even if we get this moment that's not
but somehow is, somehow it isn't,
and won't, can't, mustn't be, or ever have been
We can numb it with
ice. It might take time.
But o’clock we’ve got.
And at absolute zero,
frozen stares and
charges flow in pairs,
with even the halting
halted on stairs, and
hate might as well
be a popsicle stand
and it’s loving
standing still,
by the way.
shake your made money
jingle pockets full of change
but for all your wealth
and haunted machinery
there will always be
a kid with dried gourds on sticks
filled with sun-dried seeds
dancing the rain of pummelled
skins stretched on wood frames
weaving patterns of counter
and pulse, free, beyond your claws
such ordinary
ambitions - for cold gold's gleam
and fire rolling free
embellishing night's edges -
tattered scales glinting
beneath moss centuries deep
as if your slow dreams
seeped through lazy armour
to cosset you deep,
deeper into forgetting
absent, avoiding
the way the world failed to match
your terrible majesty
You get to travel
really far. But first
you had to be
transmogrified
to ash and gas,
and some of your
atoms will reach
escape velocity
and fall back into
the sun. It was
borrowed material
anyway, and fine
free Someday
was a good day
for returns anyway.