In you
Rests a city fractured in glassy timpani skies
Pulled across faces airy with time
Blurred in the petrified etch of bone
Unstretched, loose, thinly divined and found
In you
This city that was my city
Now facaded by mesmeric elves
Pounding sandworms into primer holes
Peering through badly textured gelatins
Looking for hard nails that can be found only
In you
This place where the children play inside
Corpses dried to dust before they died
False butterflies crawling out of jinxed cocoons
Into the fluttering open hand of a child in the child
In you
A dish of butter
A dish of mayonnaise
An artichoke heart divided
A city divided against its own city
A river divided against your flesh
A river divided against my bone
Mysterious grasses between the bread
Browning the nests of birds and crashing them
Into you
This open mouth, this broken beak,
These buildings warped and smiling through plastered arms,
Mud layers slapped around windows where kangaroo ghosts
Watch baby birds feeding
In you
Sediment is scraped from the city’s eyes
And we see ourselves still hatching
Through shell upon shell upon shell upon shell upon shell upon shell
Of tree circles slashed across your belly in birth strokes of hot paint
Pressing compass points of numbered fingers against the wall,
Aside the wall, into the wall
A circular shiver of touch
Opening
In you
Children, lost in candied forests where stale gingerbread breaks the witch’s teeth,
Feed on the caramelized windows of slivered houses
In the rotten wrappings of a city restored
In you
The city restored
The ashes recovered
The avenues reborn
The air the air of the air before
Off inlets
In you
Projection booth lights of third avenue movie houses fill jazz clubs and art supply stores with “Une Parisienne,” “Curse of the Faceless Man,” and the rhino safari of hatari hunters pairing off like gaffers and costume designers in rented trailers on location in Africa, France, and Mexico
In you
Attendants return from their jobs in elevators to padlocked gaming rooms where padlocked actors perform dreadful re-enactments of “A Christmas Carol” to audiences glimpsing Jim Morrison’s shredded snake prostate through a curtain of 27 years in which I dwelt undestinated
Without you
While the helpless fell in love with the dead
And the haircuts fell in love with the haircuts
And the lipgloss fell in love with the lipgloss
But the mothers never fell in love with the fathers
And the brides never fell in love with the grooms
But now the pawnbrokers have returned to first avenue
And I fall in love
With you
credits
from Song-A-Day,
released July 3, 2019
written and [erformed, piano and vocal, by bill white
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