SOUTH

Something is bound

to hold things together


Dark energy Net gain Universal sympathy A big lie


When I listen closely

I am not here

something has been lost

in transit


And so I make this story up about us

You are as far as Australia

is south


and the deep sea trench is at arm’s length

And the universe folds over

the Himalayas in one beautiful blizzard


of emptiness


I never said happiness

these minuscule losses

these insignificant deaths


connect me like veins

to the big burning heart

of something


I can never explain


……


Something is bound

to hold the world together


Next door is Paris

upstairs is Utica

and two flights down is the frozen river of the Aztecs


In the past there were catapults

in the future a single virus will eat a village

of truculent souls


and the polished thieves will steal our identity

and you and I will be nothing more

than you

and I


In the past volcanic corridors led from bread shops to bordellos

and nobody looked the other way

In the future the past is


anybody’s guess


and what if everybody got it wrong

between don’t remember and Pompeii


the winged phalluses

the ancient women all in black

offering them in their soiled and wrinkled hands


in this part of the story

there is no end to mourning


……


Something is bound

to hold us together


This poem forms a trinity

the haunting conundrum of religion, philosophy and mathematics


is not present here


I am trying to pull out of words

their most wretched simplicity

I am not afraid of finding


nothing there


In the past there was Sweet Briar and your hair

wet with rain

In the future all continents will break


until there is no more room to move

and the world has come full circle

and the angels are tired of holding us up


then we will say it’s all up to us

then we will conquer the deep recession

and our bankrupt innermost insolvent


something


will crawl out of the words

like Adam leaving the garden

his human heart finally broken