Robyn Art
falsae memoriae
Say I will (will you always)
Do you take (yes) this man
It was late (it was seven)
There were flowers (yes, and rain)
You wore white (a grain of rice)
There were shadows (it was light)
You were there (I was here)
All the time (at this moment)
The food was gone (we were here)
Do you take (more and more)
What would be (already there)
We were (yes) already gone
naming your dead
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance,
There's pansies, that's for thoughts. . .
- Hamlet, Act 4,
Scene 5
There's the folded sheet
for the burnt-down ghost of his hands;
There's the screen with its flapping mouth
for where his voice used to be;
Here's water in a broken glass,
for that's what forgetting tastes like;
Here's the sound of rain
For the bed without his sigh;
There's the blank space for the head
no longer beating against the wall;
Here's the stove's blue flame
for the finger's paled ring;
There's the trebled light
for the breath you can't hold onto:
Leaves; hoof print in ash; a cloud
that won't stop falling.
(and on the eighth day...)
And on the eighth day it was good,
it was light, it was the flash of one lone asteroid
trolling the podunk universe, it was the human
in flight but yet not apterous, the bulb
on the blood-tipped hinge, it was the glittering
what-all for reals, for keeps, for shit sure,
the mouth drunk deep at the hoary well,
it was her body in abeyance and all
it would issue forth (wet leaves, smoke,
the recollection of his touch like a beast
run down in the road) the voice saying Sleep,
sleep, the world is no longer beautiful,
the past a stream run long and cut deep,
the future a phantom limb from whence
her whole life sprang, the voice saying, Sleep,
sleep, love is a root in a field of snow,
it lets you pull the glass from your foot if you
can just stay drunk enough.
things to burn today
Benevolence; weeds; lists of the dead;
rent increases; infamy; hair; muted
effigies of clouds; usefulness;
skins of beasts; more lists of the dead;
wildflower; track marks; sky
like the hind end of nothing;
the come-what-may's; ragweed;
the ineluctable hemming and hawing;
more lists of the dead; dry rot;
the withered- on -the -vine;
moth wings; the loneliness of fog;
everything not nailed down;
everything coming apart; the all-
consuming and mystical wah-wah;
the shrieking, harkless asunder.