Jay Besemer
DEFINITION
it’s the nighttime of the
blood.
moment by moment
the cells stack up &
tethers make fast &
everything manages.
when the tissues collide
with stone & bark
with wind & silk
contraband of purpose
evidence accumulates
like crusts of bread
on café tables
the body changes
begins to erupt
codes in motion
slow storm
of particles all
shifting state.
fractures open,
heal.
metabolic swarm
astonished in love:
definition of a living thing.
GEOLOGICAL TIME
once my body was a fall of rocks onto a highway cut through a bank of hills.
now it is the dominion of practical stains.
with enough time, i can learn from this earth, the parts of it that i know.
the parts of my body that heave, glisten, spurt.
the ruby, the moonstone.
geological time in a biological entity:
how little logic enters into it.
POSSIBLE FORMS
I.
the real gives way to static
& we stretch into it,
make a trellis-thing & call
it increase.
noise is full
of information, & the mass
of information bends space/time
around our
pylons.
now, bodies. bodies
that radiate in the
shift of want. we have
bodies
that want.
we have that want.
as the breath gives way to panic
we shrink into it,
recede into a kernel & carry
this in a pocket.
dying stars
do not move
like we do.
learn how in the cosmos
the loss
& the gain
are one.
learn how in the cosmos
failure does not exist
& what exists
does so unapologetically.
there is no weariness. only heat death.
yearning for deep space
is yearning for paradise
for some great mouth
to smile & thank us
in words we can remember
& carry home for display.
earn the affirmation of the everything
without betrayal.
it isn’t
what we think.
II.
carbon has no gender.
likewise hydrogen.
wait for some clue
to possible forms.
behavior is this
matrix—
what is done becomes
what we seem becomes
what we are
like weather we are
outside the selves
the shelter holding
energies together
the shell of question &
answer
me & you—
what if the measure itself
is flawed
what if it isn’t human
but person
we mean
we try (& fail) to be
or see
what if this place
is also person
o ignorant stain
o face in the dark windowpane
the hole in your eye
so crowded