Balm & Lamentation

Schematic humans    ...    figures of them, & their helpers    ...    

pheromones rise

    odd jagged breath lines, serpentine imagination,

L-shaped

        for the love of larynx

name them, say them, dis-articulated    ...    

drowned

•

But frequencies in “settlement” contexts    ...    where

scent might rise from

migrant distances & disappearances

    child keeps saying keep the bottle    don’t smash    ...    my water, my life    ...    

or death aroma, if it come

•

Who will settle    ...    & you? all of you?

what is landing

        to transit?

artifacts seem solo today    ...    more horror, & twisted

•

Some things get special treatment    ...    

her head a succulent melon

her neck         for example, a slope of

yearning    ...    warnings    ...    something dark

in that jar    ...    

        unguent

winding bandages, shrouds for beautiful bodies

or useful equipment covered with ocher    ...    always red in rust    ...    

and hoisting those urgently dead,

    & stink of the dead

•

    ......    Wheels, mainstays: coils and springs, tense feet

pebbles! notice them?

& their incisions, sitting in bowls

lending credibility    ...

    ......    decorated pebbles

& from chambers, like strings of agate    ...    

you want to enter to get a dark glow    ...    you want to get them back    ...    

& there might be prayer, mantra, keening

there might be

                 a boat’s ribs         tossed         shattered

•

Pre-homo sapien hominids crossed from Africa to Crete in rafts

water dripping from stalactites    ...    

images in end zones

    ......    ubiquitous makeovers

•

females at entry    ...    secrecy    ...    once    ...    mirror    ...    

now disfigured out of gender

mothers with no milk

and in between    ...    are you ready to ride? or die?

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Another might be “abnormal water”    ...    tame and wild

abnormal can be very still

six humanoids, one with bird feet

others horned and beaked, very still    ...    

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    ......    Maybe, necklace, round one of “other”

    ......    and a random scarf for the alien

& burning of aromatic wood by the shore

& Minotaur waits his turn

•

Some want to arrive right now    ...    

some hesitant    ...    one walked to the shed, hides

resistant to sea-edge location    ...    

•

Get out of the tunnel, memory is leaning itself to

sweet awe

in the other: makeshift pods    ...    a tent perhaps

•

That kid    ...    apprentice    ...    took long way around, another thought world

he’s going to be oral, open the bottle    ...    quick getaway

circles, arcs, fortification of the zigzag when smoke rises    ...    

              says: I’ll show you

•

Kind of a narcotic archaeology?...    

shipwrecks

•

    ......    Herbs speak    ...    you think?

or how to breathe

•

There’s a beautiful fumerie

there’s perfume like hers

[per-   fumer = “through smoke, thoroughly smoked in scent”]

get a drift    ...    

charcoal scrutiny against intrusion    ...    

2

Working with willow rods that’s the method, bring great bundles of them, put on the ground, scatter them

pronounce them, saying:

“here’s one”

“here’s another one”

“here’s one, there    ...    over there    ...    ”

Willow rods, very consoling      you don’t have to be a Scythian    ...    

        you don’t have to be Syrian to know this

pronounce what you want to say

& then the ones more like women use a different method

they take a piece of the inner bark of a lime tree

        & cut it into 3 pieces

which they keep twisting & untwisting around their fingers

        as they say    ...    

“there’s a turn”

“there’s a turning”

“how many turnings in a twisty one?”

makes the pronouncers happy

staying up all night, notice the moon & its macabre signal

& hemp vapor tents on the horizon

Walk upside down in the footprints of the living    ...