Third Spring 

from Evolution

He is green.                       He is he.
“You don,t care...
“I used to spend whole mornings like this...
I carried him from there to there
               with this.

There is a broom next to the garden
which is contained within the box we made.
“How did I get here from the chair
to the garden
“By an unnatural carriage

One tree among countless trees        its leaves
are shaking         My breast is protecting
everything between us.         A rock against
my ear.    A rock set in a dish outside.

Our home is sick, so we sit outside.
He hasn,t moved.
The first injury was thoughtless.
He hasn,t moved.     He,s alive.
I look over.     The tree,s no longer shaking
so, I say, it,s disappeared.
My anxiety unclothes pedophiles.

The rock told us to sprinkle baking soda
over the holes of our home.
When we returned we counted the bodies.
We mixed baking soda      with warm water
and brought it against our sores as well.
The sores make it hard for me to speak.
Today I may not speak.
“I want to be like you…

Green on green.  Puzzled.        Children are
  the last hunter gatherers.   They tell me things.
      Like “He is hiding
            but not who he is.        Our skin is not a door.
      Not even a window.       It is atmosphere.
      Nothing, not even skin or atmosphere,
      has a mind of its own.

            Touch creates sounds.    Sound is audience
      of touch, the laws of physics.
        A child,s laws touch me.
           Premonitions move backwards.

It is impossible to know whether he does not
move, whether he hides
  because he is safe or because he is scared.
  Perhaps there is no difference.
When before and after do not matter.
  Because does he really feel safe
or is he paralyzed now with fear
his only sense a saturation of you?
  He walked all over me.     I made him.
  Now he is hiding.

Not knowing how he got here, he will
spend the whole day sick with the feeling
  of a new home.    He will hide in it
so we mistake it for his home.
  Instead of trapping him and feeding him
I will be sad, not knowing what will become
of him.    I will say you are forcing me
  to go to bed and then I will fall asleep.
How did it turn, this day?

Everything is in disarray.  We are living
out of days.  Our mattress
is out in the open.  We must not forget
we are the children of children.
We can hardly be alone    and then a new law emerges, we can,
   and it,s quiet again.
The world will not turn away from
the other man
  who wearing sleeves  pants  long  his shoes
walks into the river.
The world cannot look away.
When her hero died, it was a day
when she wasn't home in July and lighting a candle in her sister,s home  
would not equal to lighting a candle
anywhere, at hers.   No one asked her to
   but in the quiet of the floor opening,
through holes found beneath the nuptial bed,     crushed inedible
berries, lookalikes
     between her hands.
   She read to the child
   of the hero,s journey.    No one asked
her to come home.     No one
  Scattered groups of people,
   activists, mothers, readers,
   one hundred people lit a candle

     or maybe just one.
  Her time had come.   To walk the earth.
To meet the emergency of what was gone.

I wait...    for the boy to trip
on the stone   steps  out of the water.
And I wait        for one of the boys to hit his head against the rocks
moving down the water.
  And I wait for this playtime
to end.     When nature can finally forgive us.
  For all my fates to meet together
in the little book,s notes
Imagine having walked here,     down the street…
alone,     thinking you,ll meet more
  at the river.
    Do you think you,ve told the story now
      of your childhood?

  Do you?    The boy who is a young boy
  is singing a song like this voice came from
a tunnel, a song from a top 40s dance song.
      He won,t dance.    Love is not given.
Every organization   knows  it,s my birthday.
  Like the sky opening up.       Like saying it,s opening up.

He,d asked   if I should live forever
with no body  or  just as I am.     Having been
   the machine, I didn,t think      for a moment. Every gift
  in my life I owe    is because I am going to die.
To watch without being able     to participate
is a kind of hell.
And   it is different from childhood.    Who participate
  in their own dying, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
When I think of what I,ve lost,
    a boy who stops being a boy earlier
  than another boy     at the river
when a woman     watches his friend
being such a boy with him, holding onto him, touching
him too much.     At the heart of this book is my childhood.
And for that there,s a copper pot
  floating down the river, having gotten loose from someone
who has moved.    I don,t want to live
to see the world without a coat folded into the chest.
  Inventions? They are all
of fear. I have written a letter to send
  on the last day of September on the last day of July.

  We hear a conversation, a mother
to afather    from another father.
  Whether the large rocks that everyone sits on
were already here.    Whether they were brought.
  I know you are writing to me.
Your sickness is invented.     I did it
  to get closer.    Not knowing another way
I show up for my punishment.

The organization writes to me.
The woman is half my age.    And instructs.
  A body forms in its soul.
I remembered.  Waking up slowly, hearing inside
my heart and hearing inside yours. Why
  I shaved my face again.
    Lethal are these bodies.
  Practiced. Humiliated.
  Beautiful killing machines.
Are the dead making room for us?
  Is that what dying does?
As though suicide were a kind of altruism.
She didn,t want to see the way she had outgrown her guardian,s crib.
  The clothes still fit.     And so do the eyes
and the heart.    What are you like
     On a day of silence we return,   bare foot in the middle,
  until we can walk again.

I am a machine I don,t know
  where I am going, only that I love men    and the field is easy
to get to.     We are helping him
  fulfill his dream.
To see what his body can do.
“Why should I applicate myself      to leap as a spider?
There is a name
  of a place that is holy the new state is named
after. Listen to your friend.
  Listen to him
as you think he,s gone off The Deep End. Share
  with your lover
                              what he told you, one year

to the day. People were drawn
here for many reasons. But the reasons are not opportunities.
  A trinket.
A rock looks magical.

  I long for you, am kept from you,
so I dream.
I think of you,
  cannot see or speak to you,
so I kneel.          I donot know what I want yet.
In silence her body told me she was looking at the hole.
  We share bread, we share the light, and when the sun goes down
we share a tv. Told me it was occupying her.
  Days were like this.
Friendships born
  of necessity,
death,
  loss. All great.    “Those who come to our aid
become our friends.      When we have little in common,
  what we have in common
is that we,re anyone.
A child,s play crown is broken.
The trash collectors were on strike.      Now they,re gone.

  The gleam in my eye,
it was from six years ago,
  is also a star now.
As such things as a famous silence.
  Who can I count? Like a child counting her
friends, getting lost   and having to start all over.
  “Are you consoled

Noise is not an interruption. It is construction.
  Her hero opened her head like a mechanical flower.
I saw it. Tufted
  into the pillow. The petals were just squares.
Geometric shapes.
  A year ending with a talent show.
I cannot move. To where my hero,s family,s from
  so instead in a year I will focus on turning my body lethal.
What we came closer than most lives in the open-air do.
  Biology. “Say no more

A fly appears in another spot before I can open my eyes.

  Perhaps her experience had done this to her.
Not only made her question a nihilistic conviction, itself
an oxymoron, in the meaning of duty, but made her more alone.
Still, in a day, she makes three loaves of bread.
If the activists are really starving they,ll eat it.
  We shared our pestilence.

I asked if I dared.     Not waiting
  to hear an answer.     Another world lovingly watched
them communicating with motions.
I was ashamed and shared our pestilence.
  “No one knows what they are
That such a pestilence could exist
  but it,s gone now and only in being gone
could it perhaps be shared. Because we asked ourselves
  which I shared too, Are we dirty?
and shared our answer No!no! too.
  I had to share something else.
Our earliest sense, like sleeping naked.

Today I brought the plants out into the field.
It was cloudy, then a bit of sunlight.
  The leaves wouldn,t burn today.
My plan follows me.     Outside as much
  as it led me there.     I am shy.
I,ll speak
               in front of large groups,
  but I am shyer than my sister.
My sister is more shy than me.
  Through silence
the world will reach us.    Never opened, never returned.
We hold on not so much for another chance
as to mark ourselves. The path from a to b must change.

He arrives with his young wife
and we all fall in love with her.

It is warm here. Too warm today
  and he is still in pain.
There is a rhythm. For freezing the ice. I want to respond
  and do, immediately.
Half an hour feels like an eternity.
  It,s so hot I cannot think. I don,t know how much longer
  before the machine dies. That,s what I,ve had, having found
more of a rhythm, his pain down.
A bit of time which feels like an eternity.

There is nothing you can say to someone
who is suffering to make them feel the future
as anything other than them.
  People came to my aid. Other mothers.
Men silenced themselves in my presence
  or they said sorry quietly mostly.

He was like a black flower     my son
    and I was his eye. I pretended he was alive
because death was almost all we had.
  A child touching all her weapons.
My woman putting her man in his sling.
  There is a wildness inside the caretaker
that no longer lives at the surface.
  The soapbox is heavy but she is strong.
Pound for pound. When not at the surface
  her wildness emerges in moments
of attention interrupted.
These days, the caretaker does not have time to dream.
When she sees herself she sees an activist.
She thinks
  of something logistical, generational,
as though her life were a narrative of cohesion.
Thinks, Where would I be…
  A pill dissolves
on the machine-maker,s tongue.
  She sinks
all of her tears into his clothes.
Whose body must be rehabilitated.
I,m going to do something, she says,
  something bad…
They left in the middle of the night.
  To need: the most beautiful love.
Because it is polluted.
  It is    an ill thing.
Unbeknownst     beknighted  we are land.
Because the word
  bomb
means nothing to me it means
  less to me than your hand
  on my back. Because
the word doesn,t propagate.
    Empathy because I find
  that a woman
might be amorally altruistic        see herself as my child.
  We are eating pieces of flatbread.
And says
look at the moon. What a day.

None of them believe in childhood.
Perhaps we don,t worship death enough.
Because if we did we would know.
If we did we would believe in everything

a child already knows.
Truly fear the moment     when we stop trusting ourselves.
That there are days this long
begins to feel comical.

Placing the rocks on my body. It,s a way
to take his pulse. Without aspiring
  for a number
and without   exposing knowledge.
Sanctioned encounter. Perhaps there is another way
  for us to dance
together. In my free time I make excuses. For them and for us.
To meet here. Over there.
And the answer to my question    Did you read my letter
  being No
being what led some of us
  into the shape of a star. “Poor girl
I cut my hair last night
after looking for clothes
that weren,t mine to look for.
The mother and her daughter decide they will start sewing.
  Anyone knows. Taken out of order, taken yourself
out of time     is a false pregnancy.

I am drawn to the wounds
  of those who speak not thinking
there,s anything in    what they say. Someone else already
  sits inside them.
“We will begin climbing in the spring
  Let,s go back to your birthday     yes the other man
He was different from the other man
from Monday. I forget why I do what I do.
Because I can,t help myself. I am my mother. Nothing touches nothing.
The prostitute touches the immigrant.
Asking
  to be found out. I don,t know when you spoke to me first
but your voice is a voice thatI can hear.
  At least. A day shirt
becomes a night shirt. Resistance. Perhaps one day
  we will speak slowly enough. And please
don,t forget
  the fountain
spouting from a knee.
My guardian died three decades
  too soon. In the space
where she should have watched over me

I detoured. Brute unkindness
  showed me
just what I am made of.
What is to keep a heart from perspiring?
  What is the perspiration of a mint
in the hand? I now know there is a place.
In a cloud    in a hanky
or a bird on a cake.      External division
reminds me of the division within my heart.
When we fight,
we see.   what we never want to see.     This feels cruel.
  I don,t believe pain is every secret.
It,s always
  embedded
  studded
all around us.     Hope is secret.
  Pain is never wrong.

I sawllow.   Small bug
in the water.  Isn,t it proof
that I stay beside you?      There are ropes
hanging on the trees, men with covers
over their face. The road is closed.
I am lent out. And I am given.
My body when it,s whole. A great mathematician
has been sitting beside me. Touching me.  
  I think of an animal. Garbage     injured    capable of making
such a sound. I made it up in my head.
Her child, though dead, is not lost somewhere.
After two life times, I turn
today
from no one to someone     from no one to   someone, who is suddenly
  there. I keep a list.     And then skip you

Pretend your hands are my hands
so that when you touch me I touch me.
  A child,s weather,s not a fair friend.

Live for insults
  that do insulate us. The child,s name becomes
a fighting name. Or the mother,s.
I playfight with a boy
with my dead child,s name. The next day can,t stop thinking
  about him. I reach towards our home
which is still where we left it.

If you wait, then you,ll keep waiting.
Prayer is something
  like being pulled.
  The body outlandish.
I was made to suffer. It,s hard to believe that something other
  than fate guides us. I was not made
for these earthly encounters. They excite me
too easily. Then leave me carrying
a lamp to the trashside. The men
will come get it.
    We do everything together.
  Finally, we will feed each other.
No we aren,t marching.

   From a long gone.     Like a tadpole
becomes a boy with a penis.
  And neighbor,s wand
becomes my cane.
“Do not go back
“Nightly when thou comest, when thou goest
Is this a big country or a small country?
A big country to be from a smaller counter…
but perhaps older would perhaps
make our love closer?
   “What,s it like to keep your wallet in your pocket?
Set the pillow in his lap
  then the plate on the pillow.      Why don,t you read it?
    The skin under
the country,s eye
are the softest part of the country.
   A worm wants
to be born.      From yesterday,s wound, I don,t know
can a girl still open a cookie
  on the way to prostitution?

I stay
  just outside
reality but the telephone is connected through and between
  glass. At the hospital the cleaning woman
sprays the handprints. The earth should not be celebrated,
  sequestered. We should
know what it wants from us
    and go slowly to      on the landfill.

Sorry. The ground shifted a bit below us.
Sorry. A single bug

    is my dead child.
A bunch of them are like a screen.

A singer not French
  singing in French    sang only in French    When I brought myself
to the carousel city
the city was outside of itself.
  Why do they love the screen?
Our home? I mistake
the amber is it
  hanging from the chimes
for some kind of wrapped bulb elsewhere.
I am flat down
and I am sideways
if I have to isolate one of them
  from the rest of them  to be magical
    this afternoon, will you forgive me?
  My feet are sticky.
I think about him and look over
  at the box with the soil but he,s not there.
Someone else might be.
The plan for Alcatraz hang above us.
  Primacy.
  Primacy.
I find the sheets of paper under the stolen furniture
and scoot them further in.
  If he lies down with me, he,ll see them.
I won,t say anything about them.
  Our home: “One big wool sweater
It is hard to feel we can move on.
  But I don,t think I,ve really had a fizzy drink since.
Energy in a ball.
Open one can   oil spills onto the rock.

Permission to…      They look like Cirque du Soleil.
Hanging upside down. Flying too.
They have sticky feet too.
  The map of the river hang above us.
Several dots.     One here.
  There,s another one.
I,m afraid     I don,t know    what a boundary is anymore.
I want to be guided by you.
Eye itch. Outside but we can,t see what,s on the other side.
I can hear “Volunteers”
  Like a big big traveling home
made of rock from another earth.

  And it hasn,t opened since it arrived.
From today to today, is a child,s lie.
  I go inside the port-o-potty.
The river is cold now.
It is inside me, moving.
He is walking on air. They put eighteen
  holes inside me. “Don,t go into the water
until you begin bleeding.
I want to bring him here.
I want to make myself hungry.

  The two children throw rocks
at the water tank     like they dared
  each other to throw rocks at
the big big traveling home made of rock
  from another earth.

I am a child touching herself.
I won,t be invited.
I think of what can make me hungry. That can
make me hungry. And this. That too, some of that with
  that. Those too.

That thing makes a sound I have heard before.
I am nervous     to make friends
  with my old friend.   What would I even say, hi…
If we met at the water tank,
  I know what I would do. We could share
one word. My head rocks      up and down
  the door. We can all see through the door!

But we can,t see him.

They can hear my voice but they do nothing,
  The message comes back.     Imagine we have survived
It,s 500 years later
       That,s easy.
I blink and it,s 500 years.

How astonishing. How whole our spirit is
and wild when nothing is holding us
to earth.

He,s awake.
Is it possible he can move so fast so full of fear

that we doubt whether or not
we even saw him?
Is it possible that we share our home
whether we open the door or not?
He may have danced across my hand
before he hid.
    I wait to see what I want to believe.
I want to believe it was a shadow,
  an apparition, an accumulation of hair and dust.

Now I,m lying down again and say hello.
Checked in places
  we hadn,t had to check
  before for holes.
It hasn,t sunken in yet.
  The good news.           Another road was closed
  and it took everyone three times as long
to get home.
  I couldn,t wait to share with him
  the good news    Our chances don,t feel
very great at all but still
  they are infinitely higher than they were
yesterday. On our way home I saw my old
  friend. He will be leaving soon.

I imagine them taking them up in the big big
traveling home made of
rock from another earth. How quiet it must be inside.
I can see the sky above us but it is exceptionally
  quiet here too.

So their hero just died. Maybe that,s why
the road was closed off.
  I found a book outside.    In the middle of nowhere—
I looked around like it was a trap,
  it could have been. I bent down and collected it.

Now I can,t remember if he said he was going
to hide something for me.
But I heard them saying the kids are
finding money in random places.
  There wasn,t any money when I opened my book—
we want everyone to learn a bit
about their hero.
I want to learn, too.
When someone like that dies,

  it creates a kind of “void” Around them
in the space where people were walking.
  Kicks up a lot of dust.
I didn,t say that I could feel it too.
I just nodded and listened.
But I could feel it too. The air changing. I saw
fire being held to light the way, but I could not say.
  Unsure if something I,ve learnt to say
has meanings that make others wary of me.
I continued on. But feeling
  the resonance of what was in the air.
Of what happens when someone like that dies.
And the people who remain committed
send the children hunting.
And I,m just one of them.

I have many friends who are far away
  from me now.
  I think I can be far away for a very long time.
There was another fire.
People hold hands.
Pass out more food.
You could just say, I was late, I am sorry,
but instead you say I wish such and such
hadn,t happened.      She,ll never believe you.
We begin again tomorrow.
Well I go in and they,ll take my blood.
I know because I do it too.
I forget we arenot from the same complete race
but I do not forget my race.
The streets erode before anyone knows
what to do with them.
  People dig bread out from the cold ground.
It takes time for nothing to happen.
I think I am still there.
So green. It,s hard to believe this is the same sky.
That there is such fast traveling.
The news I have doesn,t come from anywhere else.
It is from right here.
On this — my favorite rock.
The second to last day of July.
You said you paid a whole month,s of pay
for the fruit we shared.
The tree could go there.
It,s hard to believe that someone else is sleeping
theretonight.

In this book and in the way I see the way
my old friend look at me,
I get the sense people want to go places.
Quite a few places still.
There is only one place for me.
My soul was formed there.