On the Lonely Stretches

 
Stop trying for a while
and see what happens:
it’s good practice for death…
giving up is a god
to help on the lonely stretches

lolling behind the back door
of ambition
I noticed your nut-brown branches
they fell elsewhere
I resembled lather
tumbling between them

broth of the subconscious
where the formed battles with the inchoate
where an idea splices the raw
traveling in the direction of words

your pounding has rounded me
dropping me off
at the door of the beyond
where I wander
like a lonely echo
drifting past chaos
into the incidentalness of a spring day

you grant me a stage
to be in your play
unknowns drift in the wings
emblems of them strewn in your arms

there’s no spot
can be tender forever
in pain or pleasure

we can stretch into the narrow
we can fold ourselves in the open
borrowing every moment
inhabiting this flesh on loan