Emptied Temples

emptied temples


how he
disconnects

the wires &
the lonely wasps

the cells empty
a blue pale skin deeply

tired of aching in
the hardness of her blood

his ladder’s rungs lead only up or down in
a breathless place of tombed & tombless stars

how he dances disconnected with his swollen needs
red-faced & naked—his hair a fright with crows

& what wisdom he pulls still mourns
the distance she draws with her

perfect mouth—her lips
lined with white scars

imparting what he
cannot hide

stamped with
stolen fire;

what with the hardness

* * *

in the moment
& only in the—this
moment—does your life exist

as in already gone ex (out of) ist (is)

in the exact
(done)
now

of gazing into it

(how it is all pre-sent
carried by distances
to hold—release

memory serves the breached

horizons—sorrows—dreams—static—joy—a finger
pushing the button or the tumultuous sun
releasing a liquid whip ten thousand miles long—
a cut breathing in a string of lost sighs)

re-sent it slips away—plus one plus one—
mountains of presents green & gold

how this servant faithful or shiftless rewraps
the painted stones
chipping at the plaster gluing moose antlers
or gargoyles or red roses to the skin of the thing—
hollowing the bones

as if always to call across an abyss
to your fading selves

& music is your calling your distance your flesh
in this room unwrapping whose thoughts
these to bridge an abyss of now

this time this abyss this self

cold beauty of heaven
roofless & lonely
locks us out

until

who
tires of
reaching

another perfect distance becomes;

bridges & abysses: laces & scales

* * *

it plays & all that holds
distant in this
flesh—

skin within skin

here
where
time/place

merge

she with a kid
on her hip
& a blue

knife

bag
of what
pushes between

o templed ecstasy

bodies sense bodies—thoughts
skin of reaching—electric skin on skin
atom to muon gluon—emptiness across emptiness

each emptiness a skin emptiness—folding—unfolding

womb shadow—the goat of shock a beard of blood—
& eyes bowl light
she sits inside a yellow kitchen—
plates piled like Babel tongues
her womb voiceless—grassless fields
& leafless woods

what abandons a slow penetration of distance

pours another smoky tea—fresh sardines
rolled in sea salt—hard cheese
the baby cries & she stares

away;

for the poet standing in her empty hallway:
& who tempts empty temples
at two million miles an hour

* * *

your name like a broken pair of scissors—
it is only a knife used to scrape away who you
failed to sew into your skin—& who is afraid
to uncover the seams that grow thick the
plaster matted with river grass & years & how
you look away laughing your eyes as sad
as old beaten men—here, take my old map—wrap
the cut & i will tell you about the way
the fox runs along the road by the old house
& the crazy drunk who cannot keep his
haunted shoes from walking where they may—
i have no stories to reveal anything save
deflection & there is tenderness in not saying
anything that cuts clean thru—(but it does it
does & there is a wincing in the wound where
the spear of certain surrender flows bright
as the red of stolen kisses—how you betray
my love with a folded prayer slipped into the
pocket of a saint)—you say there is mercy & love
in the wide silence & not a single drop
of shame to pour into my heart—i pour it myself
a cup every day so when i die i will be
immune to the judgment of god—my head like
a white hornet’s nest threaded with snakes

here how do i spread this lovely wet clay
over the body i have abandoned my own body
the ghost of who i hide the hidden blade that
will not join the slide of cutting smooth the
rope that binds us to what we cannot bear save
in the confines of this tightening silence
this casket of leathered time & there are certain
terrains where the rivers fill with a silt
brought from mountain ways—you said they were years
away—the caribou streaming like melted glaciers
over your memories—how you said she was more
magnificent than all those days thundering
like gods thru river gorges—roar of grizzlies—the Northern
Lights—snow like a skin of a thousand Mona Lisas—
still how you stand & bless the stars;

the two geographies of her fjords


Richard Lance Williams

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