The Blanket Myth

I wrote this for Danny Wildman. I know he held some complicated and frustrated views about spirituality, but no matter what happened or what happens I don't care, I just hope he found peace. This is dedicated to his memory.


  when I got born,
they didn't bother counting
my eyes, my limbs, they didn't care they had

questions
where had I been what did I see
what do I know of life, I started
to think things over

it is an unmiserable
inarticulate fall, I thought
no beauty no pity
no benefit to wandering

the sidewalks are lines of stitches
the windows are torn little pamphlets, frozen
hope is two cold blue feet
and I was a coat of deaf robins
standing mute

everything is symmetrical
_
every warmth is fire
every step is checkmate
every word is understood

a place where every hunger is music
skin
        stretched
        refrain, sustain, neck
a bridge, split down the middle
        rest
call
        play
        mess

but the music is exactly what I was trying to get away from
to a place where every warmth is understood


  love and hate were replaced with waves
fighting walls fighting waves
fighting walls fighting waves fighting
time, who can erode anything

one horde of two crumbling notions
from three wishes and back again to none
to the clutter that is every single day

that every single thing is a tower
to be dropped and shattered

a record to be broken
a grip to be broken
a hand to be broken
a hand,
gripping a broken record
full of mercury


an unjawed mare

biding its time


so how could I have asked
for a blanket and a habitat
the father, the son
I don't even have a name here

what could make me think
that any of this was before me
because of me
that it was getting any further
ahead or behind me

and what could be so heartless
that it would grab me by the eye
to tell me I'm being sent back
and that I'll never believe again


  and I did fight, trying to answer
every question I've ever asked
uttering these limbs
staggering across belt loops and
nipple rings and overtones and
chalices and empires
beneath the one and only ocean
and its perfect song humming
along the powerlines of spirit and then I got


  born, they didn't bother
counting my eyelids, my limbs
they held my name and I did not

they asked me again
what did you find
what do you know, I said

that the truth, even when you can see it
does not justify a belief
and that is why a soul
can only truly believe in something once

and I never spoke again