Timothy Liu
and to dust thou shalt return
The field was finally sown.
The evening fallen.
Perhaps some sweetness in the air.
So he began to read.
His woman in the other room.
Adjacent to his solitude.
Neither in despair nor free to roam.
Caught as yet in the about-to-be.
It would take some time.
The book he held approximating field.
Of course the consequences.
Unseen mouths to feed.
As seasons changed from room to room.
Winter here. Spring over there.
It would take some time.
The woman he held.
Their emptiness already in full bloom.
*
Had you been so adept through a series of polished hoops?
All of your training amounting to this.
Countless titles and certificates affixed to a wall.
That sort of thing.
Halos you couldn'€™t pass through now.
Working out salvation by the sweat of your furrowed brow.
The shape of your body afflicted with what it is.
What you were becoming all along.
Could regimens really keep the future at bay?
Suffering, death, etc.
All of the usual calamities that kept you employed.
Congress with whomever sought your care.
Now left benighted on pastures where you had once put out.
*
Who told thee thou wast naked? the story goes.
We had to begin somewhere.
Even in disbelief.
As the veil was rent in infant sleep never having known it.
I can feel it in my bones but I cannot see it.
A mother refusing to give suck.
If not this day if not her voice then even so.
Inhalation. Exhalation.
Was the body only messenger to the message?
This milk will cost you.
You ask the world for bread but are given stone.
Systole. Diastole. A Sisyphian stone.
With all the dead around you now coming into view.
Each with a stone not of their choosing.
Nor of their making.
The eternal journey from heart to mind less than three-feet long.
I relax my shoulders, my shoulders are relaxed.
I relax my liver, my liver is relaxed.
And so on.
With our tailbones anchored to the center of the earth.
theory
An island without roads
is a place where one can't
get to. To find us there
depends. Dig up the roads
that led us here. How else
free ourselves from wants
imposed on us, return to
our natures? The same way
a lover's voice can erase
all the words it has spoken
or might ever speak, leaving
only a signature of sound -
theory
How else free ourselves from
whatever misunderstandings
might bring, the slippage hot
between us as the friction rubs
off what had been assigned
in favor of what cannot be
known. To know the difference
between flirting with the fuck
and fucking with the flirt will
cost you dearly - no other
way to know what is needed
long after the face comes off -
theory
"Nobody will show more
vulnerability than they
can possibly bear," I heard
the stranger say - stray cats
under the table feasting
on chunks of calamari
the tourists who passed on
giving the gypsy mother
any change had tossed
into the dust - then added:
"Nor a nightmare from
which they cannot wake."
TRIPTYCH: KINO SISKA
I. Something Here
has kept me up
all night, some
insistent thing
like a drill - no -
a jackhammer
pounding though
the walls unseen
though I cannot
seem to locate
where I am or
even if I mind
all of this that
keeps intruding
on what wants
to come but can't
even as it shakes
my very sense
of being and who
it was I thought
I'd been for
all these years
up until tonight -
II. Maybe Because
this is the bed
he had slept on
before I had
arrived, it still
feels the pressure
of his body
where mine now
lies nakedly
dreaming -one
body longing
for another
who's already
been here before
imagining what
might come
to replace it
but never quite
meeting this
new stranger
who'd come
to unsettle all
that came before -
III. The Last Thing
I thought I'd do
after reading
his words was to
jack off instead
of writing him
back in my own
hand to keep me
from what I'd
longed for - some
peace of mind
by going on
without for just
awhile longer
so that I might
hold him even
closer than what
seemed possible
for us - it is
true, isn't it? -
what came on
though I hardly
even knew him -