Exodus

—after Jean Dubuffet

You could have said flame but you did not.
You could have said roof but did not.
You could have said light-bearing roof
beneath which a house crouches
you could have crushed pearls into powder
you could have struck a match.
You could have said prayer but you did not.

Twombly

parallel descending motions
“insatiable little gardens”

a machine holds the tongue
by its root

it’s you, you’re the machine

—line 2 is quoted from Friederike Mayröcker, Études, trans. Donna Stonecipher

Poor Souls’ Light

where & what is green
the bone strikes, honeycombed
frost-crowned perigee
 

 
the womb has no bone
runs the thief’s rhymed ecology

& therefore no secret solace
 
 
 
I profess my blue coin
in the tine-orchard, my book
set into the crux
of the most ancient testimony