herding the instincts...

                                               photo by Edward

merry go round mad calendar bell rings

we gather, tannins and time tribal-ized

we are worn skin

stretching and searching

to begin an ancient poem

in articulate bones

when Winter arrives

Autumn attending

we are lathed imperceptibly

by the increasing cold

we are boreal forests

we too, die in cycles

dive weighting life

towards capitulations and rain

we only come slowly to know

each life is drying

tied to shadows returning

late leaning into the sun

November is

a belladonna angled fall

a silent smile of language

part invention of the eyes

trying to smell

what gravity means

are we an inherited

ageless orbital massing

of want, desire and passage

do we need words

almost to pretend

to understand attraction

birthing, movement and

trembled temporary instillations

are why we cut our wings

are we any less or

more important than

earth air fire and water

as we gather again

and again tannins

and time tribal-ized cut

and sewn, clothing our honing

homing in on how

we wear away

each defense to love

do we sacrifice a soul

to molecular ice

do we mark season after season

with reasoning only

to have a box to put things in

do we make believe

do we live in the snows

dreaming of maypoles too

dreaming in singed hair

the scent of repulsion

embedding our raw

into lead glass

onto painted window stories

for those of us who never learned

to read or write in a capacity

beyond the pure simple blood measures

of our eyes and nose partnered

in a sensed criminality

are we just a quick fingered unseen 

a long con, an intelligence 

beyond what can be known

do we often leave ourselves

with a love no one wants

do we do this because 

we cannot quantify this

by price vectors and

advanced emotional corral methods

do we exhort for isolation

do we, in drunken pissings

tell the world

to bring on the electric fences

the neon side show messengers

the whisperers and harlequins

do we just seed reed-ed roes

when slowing down because cops hide

behind the roadside signs

can we smell what says let go

empty our dark outside

as we gather worn weary

wondering along a clocks razor-ed edge

we tribal-ize time

leather and smeared faces

we bisect the day to approach each midnight

we ride the miles for anticipation

we are hands on the highway

driving our thirst

crawling to get inside

what can be fertile

first

EJR ©