If today and today I am calling aloud

If I break into pieces of glitter on asphalt
bits of sun, the din

if tires whine on wet pavement
everything humming

If we find we are still in motion
and have arrived in Zeno’s thought, like

if sunshine hits marble and the sea lights up
we might know we were loved, are loved
if flames and harvest, the enchanted plain

If our wishes are met with dirt
and thyme, thistle, oil,
heirloom, and basil

or the end result is worry, chaos
and if “I should know better”

If our loves are anointed with missiles
Apache fire, Tomahawks
did we follow the tablets the pilgrims suggested

If we ask that every song touch its origin
just once and the years engulfed

If problems of identity confound sages,
derelict philosophers, administrators
who can say I am found

if this time you, all of it, this time now

If nothing save Saturdays at the metro and
if rain falls sidelong in the platz
doorways, onto mansard roofs

If enumerations of the fall
and if falling, cities rocked
with gas fires at dawn

Can you rescind the ghost’s double nakedness
hungry and waning

if children, soldiers, children
taken down in schools

if burning fuel

Who can’t say they have seen this
and can we sing this

if in the auroras’ reflecting the sea,
gauze touching the breast

Too bad for you, beautiful singer
unadorned by laurel
child of thunder and scapegoat alike

If the crowd in the mind becoming
crowded in streets and villages, and trains
run next to the freeway

If exit is merely a sign


2.

It isn’t alright to want just anything
all the time, be specific sky

I can read the narrow line above the hills

The day unbraids its pretty light
and I am here to see it

This must be all there is
right now in the world

There are things larger than understanding

things we know cannot
be held in the mind

If the sun throbs like a drum
every five minutes

what can we do with this

the 100,000 years it takes a photon
to reach the surface of the sun

eight minutes to hit our eyes

If every afternoon gravity and fire
it’s like that here

undressed, unwound


3.

If today and today I am speaking to you, or
if you/I whisper, touch, explain

If they/you hate those phrases
if we struggle to get to the thing
the body and the other noises

If a W stumbles here even in private
there was this man we said
everywhere between us

if speech can free us

If summer fall winter spring
the broadcast day spins round my head
its grin stuck out there

when I am a tiger inside the DMZ
or if I am a tiger man
if no one believes what I see

If behind the grail and new elm
the pink light saying welcome earthling

my biography as an atom
picture of my smile

is this what my body said

If I forget my notebook
if these gaps I feel are also the gaps
I am built inside, thinking it’s all good

If the sun sharp and hot and still
but deep and clarifying, walking its boulevards

if bound by the most ignoble cords
if squatting in time

If every day a struggle, the blue copse speaking
sky arching over nothing—uh-huh

If every struggle ice-cream truck tinkle
interrupting the cosmological

if everyday strife, everyday sprecenze
if everyday uh

is this what my body says
my buddy said

and if I die
and begin to lose consciousness
and the flag

There was this man we said
this W here even in private

I said in my letter
if I see you again


4.

A branch and the scent of pine in summer
the bridge and the water in the creek
the stones and the sound of water
the creek and my body
when hair and water flowed over me

If I am a bridge I am standing on, thinking,
saying goodbye to myself
when I stood by the water in life
thinking of my life, pine boughs
the hill next to water

The sun in the creek on the bridge
on my hair and pine boughs
in wind mixed with water,
one crow skating by, the life
of water, life of thinking
and moving, a crow passes by
this place in the mind, on my eyes


5.

So the vocalise day imprinted a sound

I’m not stupid
I too unwind in the most circuitous fashion
I undress water directly

Who hasn’t seen unnumbered sparrows
enter the silhouette of a tree

why shouldn’t I come in from the cold

Sure, there is the monument
the grass and the plate it grows on

If the answer becomes sun
then sun inside, normal things, okay

the ribbon above our heads is not a banner

Scaling this leafy architecture
we say wind / night sky / moon / clouds / stars
if silver stands for syncopation

indeed, symphonic dailiness is felt order

I have felt it at the back of me,
light on the table, the book open

If we struggle for a name
if colors change

if mood is connected to naming, to color

If say a ship’s in deep water
and a piece of sky empties the mind

or when I was frigate-tossed

if I wanted to go all over a word
and live inside its name, so be it

There is my body and the idea of my body
the surf breaking and the picture of a wave