(Untitled, unfinished #1)

To be clear about the sound. What it is
I am pushing. Was A. anything more

than a lithe construction, a handful
of materials I pushed around to fit

a larger space. (Be clear about the space.)
It was the woods. (It was the woods at night.)

Someone was panting. (My throat in fear.)
Tiny twig houses and granite thrones

and what did I do but make love
and kick them over and bury

the materials once exhausted.
It was a spoiled way to learn fear

in this dark hollow (at night the moon
reflecting off the lake like a hag, a bogey)

so I tried to share it with A. I need to be
clear about cutting out my tongue. Ask.

Puy de Dôme

A., rifts in the plaster cast
fatten all unruly: fulsome heat

spends the morning’s parchment
and yearns for a new palm

to ooze over. Lava, flowing pulse
of the underbelly, charcoals

skin, heart, skeleton, spark,
(sundries of the walking spirit)

to Hell’s hardened workplace.
If there’s another way to dust

the history of man, pass under
the molten morning smog

and give me heatless death—depart
from spinal vents bursting, corralled

sudor from the last living sculpture
puddling blood iron, ore. Such silent pain,

this division into orphan halves, cleaved
under the hot throat of day’s final edict.