Dr. Parry Celsus in Oz, image by Daniel Y. Harris
Of
this Momentum Song (thirty-seven)
The way
this
arc of moth
runs
from the splay
of eyes
you
invent ways
to remove an
hour’s contempt
through
writing syllables
of struggle into
a
distant wall, far
enough in shape
to not recognize
its
horror its phantom
etching wait into the
moments’
configurative
oscillation—
to memory
is to remove
now’s body, strip
bone to
cleanliness
of
interrogating
the
dirt of birth’s
infatuation—
we’ve gone here
to chant
chant in-
to why wind answers
in howl and holler-
ing motivated fathoms.
Each
father
each
known body to
bend embrace
into what finespun
lace draws in
shadow
across the face’s
hushing rest…
commune relevance,
thirst the same as
birth moving forward,
freedom being said
is
what the mouth
circles and pronounces
wholly resolute
Of
this Momentum Song (nearly thirty-nine)
We chant, we (reinterpret)
what fell memorized
our watching.
Looked,
we said we would,
and pushing at
our backs, a
wandering wind,
winged
and prophetic: what
comes next, an
experiment
in
what flame
alters…
the rise
from where heat
goes,
the
halved hero
never dissipates
into
whole history—
what we
sometimes sing,
a no
less sigh
than the mirror’s
humor
haunts us…
Of
this Momentum Song (thirty-nine)
Keyed into various
wisdoms,
open
windows’ vanishing.
Why we’re
here we know,
but do
not
walk into
what held
our prior
protected
echoes.
The way wait
holds
us, we
walk halved
in our
steps, timid
keeping tempo
on time to arrive
knowing
rhythm
is self
without the face
of
unknowing.
And, the way
scent first rises
to land across
why we’re moving
this way… the
prize of it holds
memory, the
nostalgia
becomes necklace,
an heirloom tucked
into the hand holding
what we were, now
becoming.
We breathe and become
what moves us.
No terror
too thin to count
on hope for home,
though home can
never be numerical. Too
many
homes never wholly
held us.
Hands as
rooms
always broken
from the rust
each hour named
in light’s misnamed
etching.
Why many
know us,
we
recall
words
use syllables
to hide
meaning,
determined
to bury secret
tongues
too
ornate
to un-
tangle
—brief as this
hour might spin,
where we’re going
now,
we’ve
become
years before
the foot moves, unearthing
mass direction
Of
this Momentum Song (forty-one)
Dark
eyes,
their
distance
closer
with
hands
pulling
shape from ex-
tracted
colors,
culled
from mirrors and
faded rhythms
wandering
achromatic
systems arrive. Hands,
into them.
We’ve stayed
long ago, near where
Song began
its
crawl, its freedom
the free language
calling forward
and
toward what hears
our
staying. Moved
when night pushed,
invented symptoms.
To listen was to
untangle strands
of silken hours.
Splayed
from what mimics
long enough
to reshape
the mirror’s
confirmed
alterations…
we
pivot to
portion our
bodies. To
open
scent
to
include
what
occurs when
language bends
to
loosen air
from
beneath what
exerts involved
effort and obtained
clarity from where
we’ve a hurried
circumstance of
nuanced
aggregative
music
Of
this Momentum Song (forty-three)
Another body gone.
We multiplied
symptoms: an
arc of symmetries
revealed
language
of breathing
breaks when the
last
cannot
rotate,
the spin dislodges, the
penultimate brings
gold
into the bone
and structure
beyond how
birth
recognizes
what
new styles
align with
momentary
fixation.
Another, gone. To
where each resides
the eye misinterprets.
Not a death in
definitional
hiring: …speak
to me means
readiness
disallows
rolling beyond
Prior’s
motivating
structure—
of how we imitate
the whole of
sound does
not
articulate
where
we become, whole—
by Song
we’re needed by
the mouth’s
arc, a
flight
finds,
in a rhythm’s
kaleidoscopic
theory, roles
from
where breaths
arrive
we
search for the body gone, stilled within what
impels distance into our momentary finding
—Felino A. Soriano
