The Lazarus Long Haul

alright it’s the 2nd of September how are you feeling - locked in some stage of unfulfillment, my novel time rarely dripping from stalactite thoughts or sweat off my brow and fingertips

I can write; the function not fossilized but elevated in poems that pass like Solana & Sequana twin sister barges on the water off the flanks of west Ile Saint Louis an island so small incorporating any lexicon of direction seems trivial quite accurately a plea of futility limp, lucid, & lurid as the yellow broken diamond of a dead skinned yellow leaf hovering on the astigmatic camouflage of hunter kaleidoscopes green, black dare I say blue waves still shuddering from the boats of two minutes ago

the water seems lower than usual and not for the first time I care about the rain (would I, could I, will I, do I take the rain? Is it all the same? the feeling of falling and being fallen on - catch me?)

is that the world laughing over my shoulder or is my heart searching for a reason to hate itself - why? is it what you learn from droughts to live without lubrication

inundation, liquidation reigns instead no moisture in the bank no reeds to bend in hollow gusts - thrust not into temptation bathe me in ash of evil (it’ll pass) don’t go too far (this time) restrain your bulging inward prowling tide (take less, love more);

the traffic of the sidewalk left me naked - were you watching? was August there beside you and am I still somehow inside you seeking eternity by one way or another? and did I suck the fragment from your tongue when it plugged my esophagus to test the depth and hospitality, suitability for profundity I wish the sawdust melting bit you back;

for a girl birthed in a swampland’s unholy water I am arid & absent - what else were you wanting? are you sure I had it? then? what about there? I almost slipped off Ile Saint Louis - the dust swallowed me brought me back to Earth, I leapt into sunlight on twinkling water and fuck it felt good to be a star for a second god are you listening? I like him better than you I wept at the knees, clinging to the snow stained sheets of a bed creaking low where no beautiful love was made; torrid is the theory of the desert, that if you trap nothing you’ll be free; stung dry, stray high (unconquerable) incorruptible; on the edge of the island I am a dead land parched and brittle playing a bad game with a sunburned hand starved & noncommittal (coitus) correlative, condensation behind my sea green aviators don’t let me crash this time, I know there won’t be any water to save me.