Sometimes you don’t die
when you’re supposed to
& now I have a choice
repair a world or build
a new one inside my body
a white door opens
into a place queerly brimming
gold light so velvet-gold
it is like the world
hasn’t happened
when I call out
all my friends are there
everyone we love
is still alive gathered
at the lakeside
like constellations
my honeyed kin
honeyed light
beneath the sky
a garden blue stalks
white buds the moon’s
marble glow the fire
distant & flickering
the body whole bright-
winged brimming
with the hours
of the day beautiful
nameless planet. Oh
friends, my friends—
bloom how you must, wild
until we are free.
Copyright © 2018 by Cameron Awkward-Rich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 30, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Were it possible, I would be naked. Of the nude philosophy:
consider the globalization of the expensive american sound.
Should we worry? We should work. I believe you’re right.
I distrust the word “white.” It’s sanctified propaganda.
Repetition is my language of origin, the highest technology. Anyway
the body is only mine provisionally. For reasons that I’m not sure of,
I am convinced that before becoming music, music was only a word.
I prefer to destroy the composer, renew the concept.
Extraordinary limitation playing freedom.
Copyright © 2019 by Taylor Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 26, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.