i keep my company before the flood
i heard the water in the shed
my mirror face follows my mirror head

my hair is long and i cut it off

We are the new Babylon, aren't we?
But never near the sun
Not a finger touches trees
The only common tongue we shared
Was the stale sound of air
When we breathed in the room
And I knew that it was true
The day mother's sigh made the quiet, pretty noise of grass that grew
In the sun

I couldn't hear it any more
I had to feel it
Mother called me
To let it stain the soles of my feet
And my elbows and my knees
And make my throat itch

So I abandoned that world
Clostrophobic, naked of poets
For lemon trees

I lie prostrate in their leaves
Blanketed from rain
I hardly speak
But when I do, I sing
With sour breath
"La la la la la"

I opened the curtains just long enough to let them know
about the shape our regret makes, jumping from cloud to cloud
There were lovers somewhere, calling that lightning.

Slowly the sky had been learning year after year how to set without the sun
so here’s a meadow, and it’s empty in human senses
an obituary for the one who'd written them all along
Can you hear the scarecrows preparing?

I told the crows, "some protons rise"
"crowded nuclei"

maybe lovers were on to something.

So this is where you prove to your right eye that your left one has nothing in it.