Temenos

There’s a metallic buzz
under the nighttime sound,
the sundown hum—
the scratchy beating of wings,
like cross-legged sitting,
singing
into whirling metal blades.
It’s a static voice,
an electric device pressed hard
against a wounded, smokey throat
to crackle thoughts.

I shoo it from my ears
like flies
when it draws too near,
when I am alone
beneath the wet darkness. Especially then.

Some of them bob like spiders,
spin their webs—
almost invisible until they catch,
cling, and coat
your eyes and mouth,
leave you sputtering.
They hang between the trees
like small suicides
and sometimes catch a breeze
for a swing
but mostly net.

Some need like fathers:
distant but vigilant, selfish,
protective sometimes
if it serves them;
critical but stoic;
kind,
when it serves them;
they cherry-pick their food.
They pick their teeth with tiny bones
and smell like tobacco.
Some of them are blue and cold.
They purple our toes, chatter our teeth.
They season us with oneiric teases
but keep good distance, wise,
and only watching,
only watching
so they feel like Time.

Some are red and burn.
They set everything on fire
and take us back to black tar,
to dirt and simple need.
Warm seduction,
there is little of them left
either
at the end of things.
(Dark Matter
is warm not cold
on that plane.)

Some are fat as babies,
giants, hungry and propped-up
on hospital beds.
They wait for death
with their big thumbs
pressed on morphine triggers
when it’s not between their gums
or pressed inside to sex.

They catalog death, the ways we die.
The boring ways, the ways forgotten
and ignored, the absurd,
the pathetic.
When we’ve forgotten,
they take turns
turning pages.
They take turns.
And they always dream on paper.