places: i'm with me in rockland

1.
bird FINGER
he's the man, the man with the flight-filled hands
his might-filled hands
such a furled FINGER
waiting to
unfold itself into you
so don't fuckin' move.

2.
i didn't used to see the way i see now--basic actions of physiognomy have changed in me.  i see depths to the things around me; i see colors, clearer and more of them.

i think changes such as this, and those like this (the way i touch, for example, the degree to which i can feel my own touch and the touch of others), are part of why i'm tired all the time.  and a small part of why i want so few people to come closer (how do you tell a passing acquaintance what miracles have occurred in your life? or to what depths you've been forced, for that matter?  and for that matter, how do you tell a friend?  literally, how do you say the words?).  the fact that i'm not so much a personality, as a force, filled with dizzyingly sharp edges--the fact that my capacity to hurt is so vast, and that nobody seems to see it...

god, save me from myself and save others from me.  send down your dark angels to make the edges curl and dance if it's your will--i know you will save me, no matter the valley i walk through.  i think i know you will save me.

3.
it's not a question of not loving birdfinger.
i will always love birdfinger because
one sends one's love
into the deepest chasms of one's experience,
the chasms where the shadows flicker--

one sends it there
a blind spelunker
looking for its own sources of light.