Trying to keep bad at bay
Toiling soil, turning mirrors on their backs
Purchasing the spray
Absence you fool, isn’t growing anything
The sky gave me its rage and draining sea
It stays the same cruel, contrail hue

It had been such a long time
Since I’d seen genimen, racemus, argentum
So long I’ve forgotten the name.
I’ve seen tortured willow though, and ink-dirt,
silt, chalk, dust, railway lines beckoning,
from the shifting Gobi or the sympathetic Ocean.

If I could only make 30 days
Over and over and over
If I could only forget the smell,
so strong that it becomes a taste,

of ammonia
or sulfur
or guncotton

If only a branch reached in to
me as if retrieving its luggage
At the carrousel.
I could depart.