by Dan Raphael

a cold walks into the room, faceless presence, gelatinous adhesion,
a coldness, glides not walks, as if molecules of it were spread all around and began to congregate, maybe just a thread of them, an antenna leading to the full body of coldness
which is also dispersed particles, coldness that doesn’t rust or tarnish:
to warm is to rust, to glow with oxygen meaning breath meaning hunger and movement,
toward and away, action without emotion, striking a balance that’s aesthetic, rational,
as precise as needed, several flowers but not enough to tell others,
cool petals of spring, sun skimming the wall top of interfering silence,
gray noise, cloud blindness:

in insulating ourselves from winter we shut out the voices of year-round, when the air is thinner
so the harmony more complex, as if anyone could hold a note for light years, light years of blues shifting as our trains will never meet, different propulsions, different struts frames
and load bearing prisms, when the only gravity is inside our bones, inside whatever we stand on
to not sink into the hungry questions, not starving but always willing to pop a few morsels,
never so hungry doubt demands we go shopping, as if legs to go with,
as if close enough to stores when I don’t know which state im in while never far from traffic,
the momentum of others, a leash so long and flexible you forget it, collars creating fashion,
fashion demanding transparent walls, voyeuristic wind,
                                                                                                    as birds are their own heat
                                                                            spectrum,
their own adamantine range from bullet hummingbird to boulder gull & crow, the yin and yang,
the sea and the prairie, conjoined but not cross-breeding, city gulls so cautious you wonder if
they’ve ever heard the beach, even the summer ocean is too cold for our bodies to stay awake in
& we havent let go enough to fly, so many metals broadcasting so deep in our bones, the coldest hour,

like my spines a carrot and the frothy greens of my face are nothing but
media,    impressions,    improvised prayers and pitches,    that sweet carrot spine,
rooting down just enough to avoid the fury of my crotch, the canyons vulnerable to invasion,
a door to a different labyrinth in an abandoned factory flooded with reeds, frogs and fish
migrating in circles without frustration, a coincidence net, following the escher lines
so we’re always right side up but cant know when we’ll meet again,
mistaking fog and mirrors for companions or newspapers,wishing i had a little door between ribs
to slide in rocks, branches, faded packaging and hear its story, its questions and needs,
the braggadocio of confident abandon. made to never comes back,
like every day i’m assigned one box to deliver somewhere in this metropolis,
a metropolitan desert or robotized wheat field where even the supervisor is afraid
to be far from the control panel—the wireless can be distracted—
irrigation has a vendetta based on random letters, scrabble dice with 26 sides,
i need a word for what just came into my presence, might have come out of me
or the reaction of in- and ex- ternal secretions kept separated and airless,
once mixed you have 30 seconds to get the shape right, the connections and sacrifices,
missing corners and forests, or how two broken homes can become a posse of educational potential, so many new things at least a couple will hook into you, willingly
these dances of less than a square inch, a sustaining memory, like that little bit of basil
in the morning egg, sweet garlic toothpaste, olive oil on dry feet,

roll me in flour made of stale bread, green manure, 3 months captured in a kernel,
the weight of snow making spring so voracious almost everything forgets its place,
forgets why we built these walls, these data bases and procedures, washing our hands
every time anyone gets within a yard of us, those furiously mutating bacteria
sharing the full spectrum of resistance to everything but their own urges,

soon i’ll turn on the heater or go somewhere else, maybe i’m not really indoors,
the cold knows if i think im outside i’ll take quick radical action to shut off all access,
thinking im upstairs when im swimming so close to the surface the other worms think im a heroic fool, just cause i don’t believe in predators wont mean im not eaten, gradually,
or swallowed whole the moment i was born,
                                                                                                                        how if an avocado is left on the tree too long
it will consume all its flesh til the seed cracks open the skin, falls to the ground,
and starts hopping about, stubby wings, crooning for food.