Robyn Art
 

falsae memoriae

Say I will (will you always)


Do you take (yes) this man


It was late (it was seven)


There were flowers (yes, and rain)


You wore white (a grain of rice)


There were shadows (it was light)


You were there (I was here)


All the time (at this moment)


The food was gone (we were here)


Do you take (more and more)


What would be (already there)


We were (yes) already gone
 

naming your dead

                                                                     There's rosemary, that's for remembrance,
                                                                          There's pansies, that's for thoughts. . .
                                                                                                   - Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5


There's the folded sheet

for the burnt-down ghost of his hands;


There's the screen with its flapping mouth

for where his voice used to be;


Here's water in a broken glass,

for that's what forgetting tastes like;


Here's the sound of rain

For the bed without his sigh;


There's the blank space for the head

no longer beating against the wall;


Here's the stove's blue flame

for the finger's paled ring;


There's the trebled light

for the breath you can't hold onto:


Leaves; hoof print in ash; a cloud

that won't stop falling.
 

(and on the eighth day...)

And on the eighth day it was good,

it was light, it was the flash of one lone asteroid

trolling the podunk universe, it was the human

in flight but yet not apterous, the bulb

on the blood-tipped hinge, it was the glittering

what-all for reals, for keeps, for shit sure,

the mouth drunk deep at the hoary well,

it was her body in abeyance and all

it would issue forth (wet leaves, smoke,

the recollection of his touch like a beast

run down in the road) the voice saying Sleep,

sleep, the world is no longer beautiful,

the past a stream run long and cut deep,

the future a phantom limb from whence

her whole life sprang, the voice saying, Sleep,

sleep, love is a root in a field of snow,

it lets you pull the glass from your foot if you

can just stay drunk enough.
 

things to burn today

Benevolence; weeds; lists of the dead;

rent increases;  infamy;  hair;  muted

effigies of clouds;  usefulness; 

skins of beasts; more lists of the dead;

wildflower;  track marks;  sky

like the hind end of nothing;

the come-what-may's; ragweed;

the ineluctable hemming and hawing;

more lists of the dead;  dry rot; 

the withered- on -the -vine;

moth wings; the loneliness of fog;

everything not nailed down;  

everything coming apart; the all-

consuming and mystical wah-wah;

the shrieking, harkless asunder.