Will now the body down
until it breaks or
shatters with cosmic force
on the sidewalk.

Hold the mind intact until it happens then
let go the last participant
until it is parked and perfect
and there is little to say.

Sit there. Stabilize until the world ends
like a neighbor. Tell
it to people — tell them
an explosion doesn’t matter,

that it doesn’t matter how many die. But it does,
it does.  It is of utmost importance.
It stops mattering the moment
the last victim dies:

you see how peace comes to the face,
how it relaxes. You see
how it begins to manifest in the earth
and sky, are struck by it. 

You unwind, let it go.
Whatever cataclysm follows, you let it go
on and on.  It’s not yours to follow.
You were its engine — no more. Let go.

Let go and let God take it. You 
were always reluctant. Now let God
do its part. Whatever you end up
calling it.  However it answers.

I throw my hands at
the boxing shade before me.

If I were a rich man
I’d hire a champion
as it’s too large a challenge,
I tell myself.  

I am
far from rich, like most
just drifting  through,
and these hands
I used to depend on
don’t clench right
for that work — 
not anymore.  Not sure
they ever did.  

I swing on
the vaporous.  I am 
bound to lose, but not yet,
I tell myself;

that time
I connected  —
I felt its mist on my skin
as I passed through
and for once that was revival
more than icy warning.

Having flurried at the hands:

were they snow,
were they vapor,
were they something else?
I have lost touch
with what I’m assumed
I’ll connect with.

I’m comfortable for now,
but wait.  

Just wait.

The status was no longer
easy, a relaxed nervous pitch;
an eventual result could be
failure, could be catastrophe,
could be nothing much at all.

The status reached over the edge.
No one coaxed it to point in one way;
instead it demanded we go either direction,
urged us to choose a way and follow it,
then stepped aside and serenely refused to choose.

I sat by tingling with the status.
I say I sat and did not worry about who would respond.
I sat and did not respond to the storm of urgency
that followed the elevated status. It was my choice
and only mine. I chose, and there was distant thunder.

Observation: some of the writers
are stuck in the wake of an eclipse
that was contested a week ago
and moved on serene from the wreckage
to today or nearby, calm as churchgoers
in the leavings of damage and mayhem.
Afterwards they thanked their stars and
moved on.  Others held their breath
and remained stark and breathless
with the memory of near death, while some
exhaled and just moved on without seeming to care
about where they were or how they might
eventually place.  A whole world collapsed
and nothing came of it for me. Nothing
moved on. The world remained intact.

Why she fell to her knees and
offered whatever she was
to blue light in the corner
of the bedroom remains
unexplained

This light around a lady
crouched on her familiar floor
suggested secrets here
Told us we didn’t deserve to understand
and we should not and would never

Next day at first light we thought about her
cold kneeling on the bedroom floor
Wondered about blue light
For which there was no explanation
Glow that remained without context

Next day then next day and all days to follow
First second third light of blue turned to red
A woman cold kneeling on a bedroom floor
We knew she was gone when they trundled her out
In a haze of blue light under neighborly gaze

Now she is fixation
Now she is figment of imagination
Now she is unsteady fact and myth of rejection
If we had known her we would have wept more
If we had been there when she passed

But instead she stayed and she stays and remains there
Shining with blue and then subsequent red
Calls out subtle and haze and blameless stare
She passed among us in such a way
That she has not left and shades every moment

It’s like there are select insects
who know I’m decaying inside.
One landed on my arm
and waited there on my skin
for what seemed like
a season. I felt a change
in the weather.  I tried 
to memorize its shape
so I could tell anyone
who might come 
how it came and I got colder
and how it was a little square
like a chitinous ice cube
and a little gray 
like a piece of old bark or flesh,
but that’s all I could say — 
something like a piece of death itself
sat down on my skin to wait
and I did not have the words
to explain that insect to anyone
who might have come by. 
It was a bit of comfort, in fact,
to have to explain something
yet not have words for it,
to sit with it upon me
and know it wanted death from me
and not want to offer it up,
to resist without trying
to create words for that resistance.
I am not worthy of this moment,
I said; it just sat there
and perhaps I was resistant in that,
but one way or another
I was alone with the insect Death
and this time, at least,
we together chose without speaking
to let this passage wait for another time
while the flies buzzed beyond the screen
and something indistinct crossed the far floor.