poem 362 of a poem a day for 2012

survivalist instinct  

I am an early mammal

I am what lives past midnight

I am water playing all the parts

I am tap root theater brain lock belief systems

I incur costs keeping reason at bay

I am the hard perch

I am the branch Autumn wants to die on

I am what blood gathers

I am those energy pooled hollows

and in streams beneath

the sound of dead velvet

I am leaves that have already fallen

and those that only sound

like they have but still cling

to the memory of the Sun

like rust left wanting an iron life too

I am crept quiet joy

I am October in the temperate forests of North America

I am the fluid shifts of seasons in the trees

I am the counter clockwise cyclonic flow of low pressure

I am weather making water without ego, without love

I am the ways we predicate our movements

I am each tightened grip loosening something

in exchange for another piece of you

I am notes written down

I am the witness who seeks a mark

to hunt mirrored shadows

I am why you are throwing roses on stage

I am the applause that always rains

a please in the maple leaves

I am giving the finger

to the base numeral guidance

that rolls divinity

into a three card monty game

I am your eyes

when they aren’t fast enough to keep up

I am why you should listen with your nose

I am the decay of a soul  and

I can happen to you too

I have no need to pay any more attention

or to the direction of which way

you bleed out on the crosswalk

when my car comes and careens

twisting my metal to your flesh and

with you out of your cage for a moment

you begin to swear in slower and slower heartbeats

you even think you hear me say

I may never be clever enough for god

but I am clever enough

to run over you

EJR ©