'...I hope you'll remember 
...that I made this small and futile attempt 
to help you remain human.'

				-Paul Bowles, 'Unwelcome Words'

smells rust and salt from a distance, a separate strain of life and underwater
one wonders if this is only myth: restlessness, broken 
by pills, static that blurs, snow that drifts, and patterns test us, cycling 
cycling, eyes: the ones that peer into the edge of your mirror, large
and red and bloodshot through and through and shot, glinting
the pair of eyes, dead under light and promises like the last drops 
of whiskey left in a glass, ice melting, slow under the bloom 
of sleep, the circle, stretched and filled and spun along its side and, here
one struggles to remember or forgets, having forgotten—this mathematics 
this insane algebra, this sense: the equation never balanced, they fudged 
the ledgers when it suited them and one makes up the difference
out of remaindered items, items left on the store-room shelves
of one's reading: leaky gutters, the flash of a jacket out of the corner 
of your sight—the basic shapes of an experience, filed down, bent
and twisted, and, now, see the icicles, hanging 
across the hewn arc, how the sun breaks across them, the shadows
cast, long and dark, as if fixed there in paint—a moment more
and one notices how the whole thing has shifted on its feet; one stares back,
slack-jawed, a small figure sketched in pencil against an immense wall, fashioned 
out of sand, and in another lifetime one knows glass, how it refracts light
differently than water—absolution in the breathing of shutter, silence

as you blink
like a child 

you've grown to understand what it means, this closeness
these cramped spaces where one's breath cuts boundaries out of flesh—
how we enter into the conversations of others.  The rain is in your eyes 
and you come to a village in the hills from which a thin trail of smoke curves, gently
upwards and you reach the well and see that the people are drinking water
and sharpening knives; someone shouts to you across the way and the corpses here 
have names, only no one knows them.  What good is a secret if there is no one
from whom it is to be kept, if there is no one to whom one can tell it ? 
And your hands smell of chalk, of compromise: soapy water, the useless puzzle, 
the missing piece.  And now, the wind sows leaves across your path 
ankle-deep and wet with rain and someone wins a prize and many more
don't.  And it continues. On, like this: always one moon to the next, over a beach 
or the reflection, winking through gaps of cloud or the train of thought 
is lost to you, now, though you hear it whistling away like some distant siren 
and you find yourself, entrenched along the banks of pavement as buses and taxis
wheel past.  One waits expecting to be seen, or one searches, expecting 

to see  the white 
so terrible 

the distance where everything gleams
and the dream is whales and infants, the sea, pregnant 
and dead, and today one goes out and meets a friend
and perhaps this is the same as having paid one's respects
at the cemetery or perhaps it means as much to have sat 
on the swings and remembered what it was like to be younger
to have thought about it and to think about it now, as it slips, fighting 
the brilliant rush of morning, perhaps it means as much to notice 
the birds and the pair passing on foot, the man and his dog—
'soon,' one says, 'soon' and, soon enough, it is all true
like a bruise or a split lip; the idea is always the next phrase
or the next grunt, wheezing for breath—you punctuate
yourself in glass, a winking nest of lights; one looks everywhere
for the remnants of one's body, finds only a sea of alien flesh: 
the people swarm on nights like these—they want to reject
each other and cannot, they flee their homes to find each other
on the streets, outside, where magic is huddled in the shadows
of old buildings, the city's secret places: alleys and sewers, places
where the air tumbles, slow and thick as stones.  This is how one
wants to frighten the stranger.  Alone, at last, and one comes 
into it with age, comes to realize the present 

as corrupt as any
violence will tell

the window is streaked with the traces of last night's tumult; mud rises 
and we've seen the man up close for long enough to be disturbed—
his irascibility is only secondary, he tells a story of how he stood and watched
as his grandfather choked and one wants windows to see out of, to see
where paths meet and silt travels to gather itself.  One wants windows to see out of, 
wants conversation, bubbling low and loud.  The ordinary sight of books
piled upon books and it makes you sad to know that all reading takes place
in these uncertain spans, fingers flickering across corners: again, the dull skein
of thought, a cube of sugar immersed in running water—souls that only explain
themselves in reference; corners upon corners of folded pages, notes
scribbled in pencil along the lengths of margins.  Doors, open and close,
creaking, swinging into houses emptied by the echoes of one's footsteps.  
One proceeds by finite steps, becomes more fragmented in proportion 
to the world.  And now it is raining.  And now it is returning home, dream 

of flight
or falling,