past-perfect-impersonal

by russell dillon

Dear you in all poems that is forever unnamed: hello again.
I believe in you and you have defined in me this age of witness.
I, too, was born into a wicker chair surrounded by laser beams,
hoping for the least strict of virgins.  Strange, us both so afflicted
by this illness’s fluorescence, and, how, from its post-morning
confetti, we stagger like shadows longing for their authors.  Would
if I could, other, but I am approaching you like static, masturbating
my heart in this strophe of light.  There are many versions of how
I fell asleep vandalizing your gardens, but I beg, could it be, that
all of them are true?  What is it you’re unable to surrender and please
may I have that, is how every love letter can be summarized.  Another
is I am sorry we both fell for the ideas of our grief, but even that fails
to explicate how you hold me from the edges as we dip past everything.
There will be no way to undrench the oceans, but is it possible we might
become those clothes we can’t recall that one time we never met?  and how
lovely to imagine all these bones in my ear existing only for the possibility
of you saying hello in forty different tongues, rather than fearing some dumb
bear’s invitation to dance emerging from the darkness, we both so delicious.
In my simpler tongue,  I am sparrowing for you, though I should warn you
now:  sometimes I sleep face down in the world, others, face down in the ether.