Surely the body is made
                        of stranger 
                                    things than politics
                                                           can steal:
          the tangled
                                    residue of stars,
                                                the plastic
                                                bag and orange
          peels I kick past
                                    the bridge,
flaming nerves splayed
                        across ancient and forgotten
avenues, the stomach-heavy goodbye
                                    to others that always
          feels a limit
                                                on anyone’s remaining days
I see now
                        I really did
          believe that the stories
                                                           of languages breaking
                                    open the embedded
                                                           money source
                                                                      were the victory
                                                of changing grandeur
over the paltry measured
                                                ties misnamed time—
                                                                      I could never believe
          that people meant the counting,
the stacking, the definitions
                                    the dividing,
                                                           that those could be more
          than misunderstanding
                                                                      even when 
                                                                      burned in iron;
                        The world is simply not 
anything any of us
                                    say of it
our names are strange delusions
          pulling us back
                                    from a brink we are always
                        falling through—
                                                           it has no shape
                                                           no words
                                                           it is 
                                                           not a brink
                                                           we are not
                                                           anyone there is
                                                           no falling

What does it mean to be so still?
to glide along the ocean floor

like some black-tongued electric eel,
to burn through marbled gold and green

of oceanic things like some
compact mass deforming space, time,

a void within voids, and then?
It is easier to imagine amphibian,

to know that blood, too, can change
its temperament as quickly as

salamanders change skin, as quickly as
eyes of newt and tongues of dog become

incantations, enchantments of art
and life just as an animal submerged

under water becomes unknown,
just as respirations become primitive

and breaths and motions cease
as a lone fish in a dark pond

arrives as an object of thought
and becomes stone.