A RIDE AFTER I ASKED DEATH TO TAKE THE RABID, FOR HIS SHOES TO DISSOLVE
AT  THE TENT ENTRANCE 

I. 
River does not reflect the sky 
it is doing something else look there
there 
is a forgotten colour for that— 

What water makes sky reflects in folded clouds  
but water does something else or nothing 

this is continental rabidity I was, stop 

I am a fish and the moon transparency 
erratic frequency without detection  
meditation, or music— 

what the water does or does not do giving up the sky  
who regurgitates all water 

in the evening clouds turn a pink shape only  
there above the river emplaced and molten 
imagine this wind in parallax  
that house 
that hour on fire 

carbon smears licking up
I am working backwards 
an overlapping dishevelment of grids 
tasting rose, welter of restraint  
the signs mixed up—  

a fish walks upright forging sibilance 
on slip that is no colour at all yet it rolls sky around in fury 

fury becomes fury and disambiguated, alloyed 
like dissolution or a white helmet, steel baton 
scratches in the distance 

having lost personhood deep behind  
edge of a word its wildflower prism 
border of dog I  
could never be as present  

as habitual and motile as the fish 

having tasted كھرباء bijali 

in the building I imagine in flames 
maybe it is mold, a damp expansion 
of electricity 
amounting to nearly the same rhetorical metastasis 


this wind then as ice 
chrysalis of fire 

then the salamander spore becomes snow poet 

her party blurs as I wheel under locked gate  
then another until the island tips over 
and river tucks into itself with cascading passivity— 

I will never arrive 

still the anadromous research centre 
red boulders encased in glass amount to landscaping 
chain against my chest—

on principle it looked like a nice place to host a dinner 
vomit in solitude 
and I heard music, so this fantasy found gravity 

I was doing something like water 

that is, free bleeding into borrowed shorts and growing my nails pawing  
at a frictionless polyseme, blank matter of his arrest 

closer the river 
closer the endless raked hydropower 
metal spires floating rush 
canal canal lock river endless 

loosening sky seethe, unmaker  
swan spiraling
as tectonic things strapped with batteries fixate— 

there is so little dignity we begin with 
in our liberty 
 you can go anywhere  
in crossing if you’re prepared to die 

our nakedness, here,  
worse— 

it is commentary 

II. 
Yet the water seems barely to move, advance, current— 
grasshopper approaches, of fibrous body without 
density suctioned to a little immobile wave 

Minutes and more minutes torque of day 
matching this valley’s declining velocity 
unending blood of night 

Something in the body having parties, hailing fish 
but using other phrases— 
I still wanted violence, to see if it could be collapsed 

That which eats women, eats their languages, the weather 
if I tried to keep it, like this, it would not stay 
but if I said it again, maybe it would dissolve 

Woodsmoke in dirty keratin or incense in fabric walls 

How aggregated I becomes, riding the bus  
under the radiance of a bruised cervix 
dreaming of choking, praying with ibrahim— 

A current modulator, two coordinates, dehydrated beech
beams shuttling energy from one shore to the other 
braided cables, no thing, no image 

Yet there are tangles of fluorocarbon and little bait pearls 
flung out from a pole cast wide: planted ornaments of lazy hunting— 
Heat murmurs in gaps between white oaks 

Unpaintable, the suffused tongue of water and fish  
of my grief fish my ancestor, who carries surface 
refracted firmament forever on her spine—

Alone under atmosphere, infrastructure, the demon of god: 
Because they exist, I stopped for them  
and that is all, 

I remain stopped