Inking difference

A lost gram of ink touches color touches
       silk as it is learns to want  -  asks
       the silkworm: where to find the

warmth of your longing that begets the 
       eking of song?  -  asks the parchment: 
       which word sat heavy and which light

and how to tell them apart if the two insist 
       on being same?   will their difference 
       subsist if I ink them together as one?

as I hold the sun

as I hold the sun in my eyes, three
    wishes pretend to sight i- the
    largeness of heaven's folly ii- the
    slow tremble of hunger's feet, and
    iii- my eyes again, knowing the

the limits of knowing, the fragility
    of trees & the hidden guile of 
    songs that pretend to know by
    nighttime what transpired between
    this stillness and that, unmasked -

grief is no stranger

grief is no stranger to story    its
       hooves are tried &
       tread on the grip of 
       honest blood
       remembered so of-
       ten it forgets to dry -

mountainspeak

you cannot send a promise from the top
       of a mountain stream to its furthest
       point downstream where it meets

the rascalled dream punctured by pin-
       holes of lacerated poems     read 
       those and surely the tread of

your wizardry will woe down with the 
       sewers of hazard     turn now & stop
       it's time to rein in mountainspeak -

once trust wavers, the hold of mountains
      is water     touch the droplets and
      memory will hold no torch for you

to laugh your poems away    to torch those
      words, you need the hunger of 
      ancients and the foul breath that

lingers as sainthood comes crushing
      down     these poems are not to
      be trusted, mountainspeak be damned -

sense of water

still water rinses an ocean    I can hear the
       rush often, the din of the whistle often

as it stills itself in the rinse, in the rush - I
       lose my sense of water when the wall

of hollow trembles    I can hear the tremble
       silence itself & the hollow rush often -

pedagogy of unfeel & feel

petaled river, where are the rooms for you to breathe?
       sheathed in words ardored with swell of sword, step
       into the horror of now, where dream is companion 
       no more, wed as it is to rule & measure -

petaled river, with song as blood, swell of root & hum of
       bond, we are one - the clay of belonging is born to
       the sun of now, where dream is wed to flow of new,
       to the round of moon, its ooze & leisure -

dual & binary

Can you transcribe a cruel word enough times such that
        in the limit it belongs? could

You rope in a cry with limbs dexterous enough to think it
      a laugh? when do the limits

Cross, foretelling beginnings of duality? how can you persist
      in ones and zeroes forever?  

Ant song

I met Revolution again the other day recalling how a younger me was 
          smitten by her fire & song      so now are you the peacock or the

Mountain? neither, she said, I am the dust that settled on the monkey's
          breath after your wars      will you then sear through our dreams as

Violet-green clouds of remembrance?   only the monkey's breath knows
          when your blanched sword melds with the colors of a million ants -  

sun-memory

sun draws not a single breach of song     carries over
       lucid breath of trunk & color      inches forth the
       grip of vapor, move of word, strum of earth -

sun forgets what it shone over      carrier of branch &
        home, humor & moan       inching away from 
        caliper & scale, it remembers mostly mirth -

Counting problem

It's a counting problem -  ones turning into other ones,
                                             the count depending not on the leopard's spots but how
                                             they roll off her back teaching clouds how to fold song into
                                             rain

---

The transformation of a dual world into a binary world is the transformation of the world of two and of many inequalities but complete into a world of one and deficiency. If duality is one of the variants of the multiple, binarism is the world of the one, of the grid and universal referent.

– Rita Laura Segato