Darkness Rose from the Night Like a Gown

One side of the torn card read “OOF”
& the other had crude letters
in an alphabet I didn't know, gouged
with a fingernail or coin.

In the perfect silence of outer space
a washing machine sang
& I was comforted.

The cry of a billion keyboards
fell back to earth.

Feel at peace with being
vulnerable.

I'm writing this in a rowboat.

Beware: the thing you love most
in a person because it is also in you
may mean to them the very opposite
of what it means to you.

One item we'll never see in an obituary:
"Successful mystic."

It is what it isn't.

Exhaustion came over me like a calling.

Fog & moon & Dexter Gordon
moving.

The brain part that processes anxiety
kicks in
in the presence of the ghost,
forcing reason to immediately make sense
& restore order.

Love is more belief than belief.

Why do they call those things silverfish
& why do they live in old books?
Why not call old books water?

Love is for when I'm no good
at love.

Your dark faith, bundled up,
scarf trailing, comfortable with mystery,
sailing through the night.

I love to play
but I hate games.

Can gentleness be fierce?
It can but requires
a new definition. New definitions
cure anything.

Remnants of my dream lay around,
the cut hat, the smoking bridge.

This morning a pale city hawk swept
over the garden, the rush
on my neck like a ghost passing.

(Silence is (humility because
there's no argument in) silence.)

I concede that humility is a virtue
but I am too proud to accept anybody
else's definition of it.

The ghost an alligator in the ceiling,
thrashing, a woman's voice
in the stethoscope, chills like a healing
from my ears to my toes.

Humility is freedom from what others
think, from what I think, from proof
& evidence & justification, from the
definition of humility.

Those girls have thousands of years
of many-armed goddess charmers
wiggling in their blood.

Contempt is cozy, addictive, violent.

The memory of a good book is better
than the book. The memory of a great
book is perfect.

Yes world I'll buy it all but 1st must
go to my room for my cc & won't climb
out the window with my brains into
the woods promise swear.

One day we discovered we had grown
into mountains together. Our laughter
surprised us like thunder & distance
& respect.