How Borges felt about hexagons

is how I blꚙdfell horses. Though they are lost

the moment I begin to skun

them, I could never ask for another

kind of music. The horses I choose

never listen to the horses I’ve become,

& just when I get close, all change direction.

& astronomically.

& I’m trying to love a little

cruelly. & I'm trying.

To love simply, but when I open myself,

the horses go mute & breathless. I roast their bones for supper, spill their blꚙd

as wine

upon the heavens. Believe me, when I blꚙdfell myself

upon the bloody pulp of this page,

I've loved each & every & it was always real.

But the horses it has cost me,

the grooves in my heart

this has sealed.

*

Let’s not skin a horse & wear it together.

Elsewhere I have to say no. Elsewhere I can't stand

the magma plume of death::orse

pooling us against

each other—

Like moonhorsen awakened too early under the skin of the artic.

Elsewhere there’s no more song of how far you'd go

to covet & flay

the :: wildUnplace ::

{of its AntiHorseSpace}—

Here you'd kiss the mezuzah & skin the horses from my breath.

Elsewhere I exhale the little graces & skun a home

just as fortune hunters arrive with first snow.

All we hear are weary horses within weary door.

To not skin will make us thin & mutinous

—& the horse is many & you

won’t let me go, or leave

this elegy alone

& on the loose,

with bloody teeth

& bloody hooves—

I'm no perfect moon, with perfect swell,

but polar gravity drunk on the spell

of purple mountains laurels—

Elsewhere a single raven is circles

intertwining us both & you

inhale

me

as if your spoils

to impale & expose—

& all that's left to hear

are bloody horses

snared in bloodied year—

:

:

Here you grace the mezuzah & lead horses

away from my breath

Here you can't skin home

without calling us

::Death::—  

 & I say no

to phantasm of farmstead :: longhouse :: box-bed

I’ll drink no more from wicked chalice

stolen straight from two-faced lips

nor hang

map :: portrait :: parchments

to cover all the doors

broken in your head—

only for the sulfur clouds of Venus

where a single day is longer than its year

would I give {this skin}

I'd endure the frozen side of Mercury

& breathe the gas rings of Saturn

if it meant I could return to you

the kind of darkness in which nothing survives

until it skuns

some new planet

right here

in this solar system—

a cold

{cold}  

distant no one

has seen it

as you'd tell it

an army of bloody hooves skunning curious &

crimson

as if my death had never not risen

No passionfruit stays intact for its own sake.
Perfect. Puckered. Thrown away. Or ends
up in the humanlike hands
of a raccoon the city has yet
to catch. I will forgo how we got here.
I won’t tell you how a social distance can stretch
since I should probably be dead. If honest about chances I did
not have & those I’ve taken. Truth be said, I ate the passion
but the fruit got away. Because forces are known
through their interactions. Because in making
connections, I knew, going in, both of us
were going to lose, anyway.
These times make causal
an essence. How today “IRL”
is profane— if a city’s to chase
a bandit with a net of frayed mesh
& rusty grip— while we were sheltering {ⁱⁿ} -

over a screen—   I mean

I can’t not abbreviate the hyper- of this forced
reality. I’m trying. I’d like to get back
to sitting on benches, sharing breath

-cheeked. Wind-skirted. Knee-to-knee.
Chancing. I still mean the troubled grace of taking
for granted. When alone & not thinking each moment

could be an uploaded view. Subscribers. Avatar. Revenue.
Not that you & I are part of this,

but just as guilty. & a guess
via algorithms.   It’s cost us

warmth & concern to connect.
It’s gone on longer than this      
pandemic. It’s how we stay

intact & near- strangers,
how ⁿᵃⁿᵒinfoᵐᵃᵗⁱᶜˢ has. {ˢᵗᵃʳᵗ﹗}Up
& ᵗᵉˡᵉchanged. ᴹᶦⁿᵈˡᵉˢˢintegration

&. ᵐᶦᶜʳᵒDissemination. In the dark even my littlest
deaths can’t help. Turn.
Institutes &. Fabrications

of less-wild raccoons freeing
a million kilowatt & impassioned
froots from locked & chained

garbage chutes.   I vow both the raccoon
& I have masks, & either could be the more
reliant, this is true,      I believe

they terrify me
& wake you, my neighbor,
to walk with me.

We don’t remember when it started.
How keeping six feet safe
increases yearning.  

It’s just it won’t do

a “damnthing”  when we come upon
their grizzly bottoms sticking
up, stalking for day-old

crust & magnetars & sweet gamma beginnings.
When they rise up, catch us        watching,
I know I’m so far

from everything,

no matter the pull of a given
interaction. I keep my phone lost
at home, yet. Solitude

turns to sequencing. You’ve got a new
complaint. Blocking these little. Beasts.
Entrenched in a different. Forecasting.

Efficiency. Expertise. Patent. Demands giving
chase to. The city spares. By accident these days. So runs
rampant. True. False. Not applicable, isn’t it, doesn’t it seem ALL

{ᵈᵒᵒᵐ  doom  ᵈᵒᵒᵐ}—
a new

{kind of}

:: ! 4D ! ::

ᴴʸᴾᴱᴿ⁻ᴵᴹᴾᴱᴺᴰᴵᴺᴳ⁻ᴴᴱᴿᴱgloom—

*

One of us wakes up. One more
drenched. This bench in a humid
garden stings. My head steams in
your warm lap. Curl-stuck. Shirt split
opening. Nose slightly exposed. Shaking.
Muffled. You want to ask. We both know
it’s too soon. Three
passionfruit. One too many
is two for you & me, & the last
for the raccoon
who’s known
to expose his face
in the middle of the day.
Not in one’s nature. Not anymore. I’m trying
not to hearsay. But the situation. When you soothe

                             you follow me on social
                             & caught so many         perfect flat-lays
                             of bisected mangosteen & guava cleaved

                             exposing seed on the cleanest    cutting
                             in wood & mist   while on your way
                             to temporary hawkers
                             beneath our train

                             & what are seasons anymore & patience & half
                             -running       a single hope      I’d still be here
                             at the end of some rope—      ᴵᴿᴸ—            

I'm trying to tell you. I’m not sorry
there's no formula, no equation
to forgo the lips,
but not the hand,
so we can climb
right back. What it will be, I can't
promise. Or ease. & that's not
holding at this new length
unblemished,
smooth,
obtuse.

That's me telling you
the truth.

& it’s the most ʰᵃˡᶠhorsen thing to try to stay

                                    {half :: human}

by making excuses. I’m not ready to leave

        just yet, haven't
            the faintest idea

why, say, everything that fits me is still a little too big,

always a little too long in the sleeve
so my cold hands are always warm.

How did this sort of thing work itself out,
while, never mind the season, I'm reaching

for the top shelf, the flag on the mountain,
a ladder's last ring, friendly hand lifting me,

squeezing onto trains, humans hold the doors for me,
as if not taking up too much space is a good thing,

                          the best thing, half-step
                          not yet open-

           lipped
           joyous, a second lit

at the tunnel's end? As if thy neighbors

will return to strangers, in the way
trains derail, whole families go missing,

sock lost in a laundromat, mere nuisance, forgotten,
move over, kiddo, duchess, dame, & so what, & what's

more they get a little trigger happy, sure, have issues, reservations,

                          party of six, minus one, they still grieve
                         & cross countless county limits & walled cities

          to spread happiness, wildfire, weeds, virus, preach

always someone else is a demon & the lay of the land
insisting upon itself as how things, all things, stand.

I never knew where I fit in. I drag my feet
through sodden sand & roll up my sleeves

which still fall into the water, the oil-slick,
tin-canned, six-pack-plastic expanse

in which I'm still making excuses,
asking for forgiveness in endangered

speech, my cold hands growing colder,

so far from whales which know not one world
or two but three— and yet another & can't imagine

     ringing

through the outer spheres that brought you here.
If I ever stopped believing, would love itself die

                    a little, which might not be

just a little, just another day I'm carrying
my bone-dry raincoat over my shoulder,

bunched up, between

forecasts of heatwaves & hurricanes, a great
flood, the world ending, if you could just see

how I’ve seen dying roaches & dry creeks, & the dirt beneath

earth::orses' feet, ants who never sleep
amid the apostles' catacombs, & fields

& fields overrun with magpies & locusts,

               even if your most loving touch could not save

                            the bones of ancient equine now extinct,

                                     if again I had to almost die

                  for you to get to me

        a little too late
                   I'd still listen for you,

in this sea-leaving
pull I can't quite

             perceive, this no-stars  

breaching the sky, & there's no sea I've left

                                 which you've not uneased, this
                                 wherever time goes, you & I

                                       & what last stars I away
                                       will bind far

                                       from them static
                                       & plain say what

                           last stars die I have
                                       been to have died

                           anyway