Occupado

It’s time to notice again

the air-

and the perfect weight

to each of your colours

how your shadows stick to the bone

tied, occupied, speaking for you

It’s not like lovers might say-

in the locking of eyes

but in the whole, and in each of us

how the light

stretches over cheeks and nose

flashing of hair and fingers

inseparable from the flux of objects that clothe us

following the undertow of singular movements

becoming plural

raising of glass, leaning in, looking over—

I’m in wonder again,

and so casually.

I’m miming the actions of a person talking

And some words do come out, I think

I’m trying to stay here

“in conversation”

Knowing if I sink from it, I will lose also

This other awareness

That has crept in, like pleasure

Like heat rising.

We cannot have a metaphysics

I’ve read over and over

That line, and know it to be true

and also useless.

Because nothing will stop this program

of translation:

how might I move each of you into

The pictorial

so— outside of, or in spite of

or perhaps parallel to?

your bodies.

I can’t have it.

but you are full, not finished, open.

The program runs on.

It is night.

Darkness isn’t empty

It’s the gestation of dawn and it’s familiar colours

But these are better.

They are the promise and the mind

of colours

the root and the world

as it created colours

And the best part is, friend:

They are us

Innocently (how have we managed that?)

Rolling haphazardly out of some communal nest

Rubbing our eyes at the first sign of sun

And banishing sleep

Let me say it another way, there are many angles in:

The colours you carry now

are somehow the accumulation, the full knowledge of what makes them.

They are not superficial to you

in this moment.

But they are equally fresh, as if their first sighting.

How y’all managed to do this

On a Sunday night, here

is a mystery, congrats!

Or we just say: it’s winter into spring

It’s earthlings, animals, it’s life.