Autumn clouds pile up purple in the northern sky.
The concert begins: from strings to wood to stones, somewhere in the middle our bodies
hope to be held.
The violins play. A hand waves in the air like a wing.
This is the time we keep, some early, others late.
Sitting still, each one wears a cloud of silence.
Our flesh is so particular. Am I the only one with this hunger? Note after note, less
and less, the mosaic of bones drifts into a cloud of sleep.
Last night Michael danced on a table of light.
The men told him with their eyes, "Hold me, please." Gods move this way and wear
nakedness like a cloud.
My father left during the music, and never came back.
After that, we placed a stone on the mouth of the earth.
Some say bones are made of clouds, others say stones.
Mice are the most numerous mammals in the world.
They are known to be silent when music plays.
The body of a mouse weights as much as a cloud.
How long can Michael dance and make his skin public property? Generations have held on
to some songs, only to release them for applause.
The record for the number of field mice killed in a single day by one application of
poison is 28,000. It is held by a farmer in Australia.
Mother saved the pot roast bone just for me.
She spread the salted marrow on a slice of bread, then watched as I ate it, glad the
secret lives on.
I see the bald-headed man wants Michael, too.
He pays a dollar as well to feel the smooth slide of Michael's thigh, the electric paper
of his skin.
Words reside in memory like clouds or stones.
"I know you love me, so, I will never see you again." These were his words, his
and his alone.
It is Tishri, the month when the world was created.
On the boulevard young men eat lunch al fresco.
Their bodies are worlds yet to bloom with profiles that mock the leaves crumbling under
foot,
I think of the Epicureans that deny olam haba.
So many are intent on devouring their own time.
Sprinkle water here mixed with the ashes of a red heifer for we have touched something
dead.
I cannot discharge the memory of his hands, or the sport we played with our fingers.
Burnt loose by the season, caught up in doorways and lamps, it lingers like smoke in the
wind.
The barricade of his beauty is abandoned now.
A memory of those flags is a melody that moves the way a poem moves through doomed worlds,
or the move from silken hair to spotted hands.
My body falls into a well of words then into itself.
Books have never made a difference to power.
Release me from the laws of this world- the melody and the lyrics never match.
I hope for an ancient language of praise, but all I have is my mother's tongue and a
carpenter's frightening claim against all odds.
Bad habits from wandering leave me shipwrecked.
The sages tell of two ropes that tie us down.
This bondage to the world is by cruelty or by love, and so we see how flesh is fleeting as
the grass, except to God who speaks and worlds come to pass.
