If gold, your figure as mirror on the ground is

After Alejandra Pizarnik, after Fernando Pessoa i Comic screen to change what came to notice           Even though sky at first was the same blank slate     So literal. The value of  it You make your own lion’s teeth sink in, slowly ii The insects claim you don’t belong here then bite & bite Virtue the undulant yards as penance iii Hordes of animals without teeth crash the window in a dream & it means you are not hungry enough iv The capuchin stays silent in the void You feel the sun of  unknown experiments v Once a choice comes to full & the act carries the joy of struggle                       The winter mother severs only a chance at restarting. Could you sorrow the one unchosen thing infinitely so it feels occasional, the act is itself vi If  I write a texture I could make it stucco like childhood Aloe or cactus spines                      To cut is to heal the rough of a cut             All dark blue against good skin like leather vii Imagine the root of oppositional archetypes Next to me chrysanthemums the rust of  blood when it dries but in front of me So much blue & a broken white I can’t see myself on purpose viii What rocks itself  out of  time on a wingbeat Is not a name or a silence As in sanity’s meager gestures. Downriver, the unruly sound turned C-shaped / Real secrets as fragrant and familiar as what’s under the smoke ix I stand next to the rocks Where you choose to return without choosing / Some black, some silver The lines of ash & passage A neon swig of enlightenment x Don’t be exceptional in this false. All fluent in nothing, hiding where your debt grows Be aggressive or do not mind, you say I feel like a chicken after boiling Or like you do now — smooth from the pain (I love how you love promises because they are lies) (I love the honesty of cheap rings) Like a ripened plum or two, pitted — Now a flat middle ground, now another interior to hold the ruin xi Your hair grows in eighths on alternate days but you pretend not to count What rains in it What grandiose adornment hasn’t happened but will happen Also a lie — in color xii The grunting you hear on the other side of the wall might be music Or the disaster of a concrete floor The western cities, the eastern cities / that inscrutable skin I chose The high ground of resurrection Discursive — falling soft / I witness the guilt planted for others I practice by moving my legs I am a bracket You are the conquering seawall Nothing earth about you except what clean is visible Also your hands