Spencer Selby

THE GIFT                  for BL

Overdrawn in search of
clearing notes on edge
that look like this:

First door back from
present fear
thick on skull by
glow of flame in
jagged half-pain

Here without relief
man in a million
homesick blessing as
a cord that binds me
to no map I read
at time most dear

Hard travel in my
photograph historic

Tongues wrong that
speak of making room for
young and ghostly charms
I still believe in

Now night is waking
at the end of love

Now beauty broken
is a book I sit on
in a tower reaching
toward a perfect sky

Past my window runs a tree
I cannot touch

Against my profile
leaves are falling

leaves of every color
telling me what doesn't work
as I get up and make
another try
 
 

CREATURE               for CW

I wasn't going to do this
but suddenly your words
won't let me by

Your hand extended
by trajectory of its
solitude and echo

behind black-on-black
transparent questions
that are falling
from the sky

My need to answer in
subversion of description

My need to separate
one web from another

to reach the difference
I'm in love with
but can't imagine
when I try

Now in replica
you expose a vein
I pretend is mine

Words escape from
all visible reference to
a choice I make
in darkness

Meaning yields
to rain to fear to
dislocate a doorway
we don't understand

Destination occupied
with disappearance
of our native land

Form concealed in
real-time clothing
we can never take off

Body filled with writing
where there is no plot

where eyes are not eyes
and the sun is swimming
in a sea of music
we can barely hear
 
 

THE EXPLANATION

The explanation won't fit
standing up straight
wheeling a chalkboard
downstage in place of
your former artifact
of testing bias

You might expect
curves and vertical lines
collectively speaking
in a church that's
high for nothing

You might expect
songs heavy with
artificial dogma
and false prophets
turning up the volume
on the basis of kinship

I mean the dumbest dog
knows wealth and power
get erased every night

Dreams work by being
pushed through the door
backwards

dress unobtrusive
in casual clothing
that you never
wear again

I mean drop the window
on my hand as it
writes you out of
the picture

Say I don't know
what I'm talking about

Put the book down
Turn the set off
and move away
 

<^>