Mind Garden, Heart Garden:

I have a need to see the painting when no one is looking. The god-

thought if there was such a thing, inconsolable, of Saturday

reaching for Sunday to ride out onto the Indian Ocean like

an argument of starched waves in their coffin-white lace I might

finger as I pass. There are hands in the paintings: raised, pointing,

folded, reaching, reaching    ...    there’s a leporello book intended for

my ex-lover’s breathing, weather balloons like colored severed heads

laughing their way up the sky’s fever-continuing threshold of three

miles withholding this formula for desire. Beside the one body and its

skying figures of speech, night’s impressionist-flecked mask captured

by singing: try to inhale. And again, please. Cough up cadmium twice,

suddenly. Carry the caraway seed page away, fill your sea purse head

with the tiny unborn. Painting, like digging up your garden in the dark,

isn’t spring. Isn’t daddy root, mama bud pullulating for some creation.

Isn’t spring. Isn’t season’s salt measure for your worth. Whoever

told you that lied about what’s to be framed next.