Between us, so little time with the parts to play,
To have a heart, and for one another of the world
To take the notice to heart and center
As the expanding universe of ourselves
Seems to have no center and so,
Need not worry about holding,
As everything falls apart.

Further, the fall, the face of the deep in retreat
Just as our minds begin to reveal
The underlying structures of the platitudes, of advice,
Of liberation by and for politics left inside a rusting can,
Like old nails that still threaten tetanus.

A real long shot, borrowed from some other hero,
A blazing glory before we go quiet as a night sky,
Tranquil as a break from waking
To the easier togetherness of acceptance with remorse.
Man has guilty fingers and so
Points them which way and up, making claims.
Sacrifice is insufficient appeasement,
Let’s not even try what we already know,
That blood is just blood,
Best left as blue in the veins,
Not red on the stage.

A sleepy bedtime story, perhaps.
Some reassurant voice for the void
To play with as much abandon as we can muster
For emptiness, the unmoving mover in the net of illusion.
It simply is not so.

She braids her hair with negative space in mind,
Coiled around all 11 dimensions simultaneously
In tension with the furthest and the closest parts
Turning negative to positive in the vice of math verses
The pool of emotion, sitting alone in ill-fitting shoes at the bar.
It is too high, too far, coming all of this way
As the hypnotist with her pocket of jewels,
The doctor’s pill and the cook’s potion concocted to
A powder or lotion for the skin.
Can we come in?

Cosmetology, astronomy as clairvoyance,
Purgation of miles around the table or
Casting a line with a fly,
We are sure enough and far enough along
For the anti-matter- emetics to stay in their case.
Holding the wheel, she has been through this tunnel before,
Worm hole to the inner eye,
The cleft between, the suppuration of the real
In favor of the real, the most stable story told,
Like an orbit, like a billion years of DNA awash and adrift
As the tide herself pulling blindly the waves forward and back,
Repeating the infinite nocturne
That pries and pieces consciousness together for something to eat,
Someone to love,
Some brave shape comprehending brave shapes.
That is us. That is all.

Blasting caps and lightning, aside,
Astride the idea of this standing for that and me,
As narrative of they,
Obligatory to before and surely lost to after.
Nomenclature of now,
Talking leaves making promise
Of sunshine and plant life.
A little more
A little less
Inevitable, we are called and as surely culled
As an aging athlete missing the mark
With so many ill found and misguided,
Perfect children.

By Rolf Stavig
11/30/2022