Josefine Cole

the universe doesn’t care
about your flat tire
like a flagging truck driver
grunting impassively
in passing
hurtling inexplicably
toward some distant

while the cargo
silently
catches fire

every time i see you
a wound reopens
for fear and yearning
love bright and searing
the gash will never fill,
it seems
but absorbs and expands
by terror and joy of
living love

a brimming hemisphere of frost and dew
if i had the eyes i’d drink the buttermilk
soaring, dusting, evergreens and irises
and heavy and chill and bone-filling,
the body sings and moans
the body feels
it all passes through
a one point of retention,
the feeling all-flowing
banquet’s ongoing
we royalty rise to
drink the frost and dew

there’s room for you here
elephant ears, beckoning flaps
of technicolor headlong
nylon
sweeping to fathomless
peaked skies
this the circus tent
a collective fantasy
billows the edges
luffs the outlying
nowhere circumference
i hear it swaying
in termission’s respite
for moments almost unheeded
between acts unspeakably
in anely captivating
we’ve done the math
the permutations
the conflagrations
endless
come stay a while, and
when we’re sorry and
small enough
you and i
try to find the edges together

don’t proclaim victory just yet-
by the time you summit
that next crest,
your mirage may have shifted-
the full palette of you
retranslated
in the mists

bring in the god,
the one moment
for which you will die
endlessly

ready your houses
throw open the doors
and sit huddled
silent and awed
for approaching love
-in what form?
ball lightning, fierce
unyielding
all-vivifying, blinding
-a small animal
tailing you subtly
tracing figure-eights
around your nervous
shuffling working feet
until you slow succumb
enough to just nibble
at your toes, venom
flowing from pores
to heart pounding
-will you dismiss it
anaesthetize the flaring
pulse unbecoming
interfering
-or slide into the fire
, melt and relish
the wet eccentric flow
of life in each and all
?

like God,
inscrutable
ineffable
formation
our every meeting
a new birth
a membrane
bursting
as we part

the curtain’s falling, mate
on stagehands mechanically
arranging the deck chairs
from desk chairs playing
with paper raining
heady dreams of plasma tvs,
star trek and nba series

it’s a mug’s game they play, mate-
look at those hands shaking,
tainting claimed festivity with desperation,
mouth blustering bellows of froth
pretending to ease
chilling air to tropical indifference

they’d really like to be
swaying with the palms but
it’s too quiet in paradise

relentless love she gives me,
her sore and mushy only
girl
tumbling wheeling reeling
from trouble to terror,
tantrum
to her, arms wide and round,
enfold her every limb,
bask in hard and scraping
bark
enfold her love, and feel how whole
i might be