Lilac Field

To perform death is something only humans would do

No animal would sit there

With a blank look on its face

Just because the camera is there

No no an animal would look directly in it

Or cover its face, like the overweight

Woman in the picture in the magazine

By the room where I keep my bed

What people don’t understand about beauty

Is that after all it is not fleeting

After all it is so gross to be that way

That someone sees among you

After all, to call into question

I painted my lips, my eyes

Only our scholars know that

To perform is to be malleable

To perform in language

Or was it

The large purple insect I let in the room

Or was it the furred face — the hippo or the gorge

That I was the devil in the wood

In my own bones that I knew the face

That I took that face

Was it midnight blue sky

No, were my wings iridescent

Even in these lines

The voice moves you

What sense of exquisite cause

Thought

Moves you past these lines

Into conversation

With the undead

I don’t know

That is something

You will have to answer for yourself

I came back to this place to help you

And that I did

Shoot sparks of green and gray

Through time

What skin sack

I put myself  in

I mean for what, why,

Or who

Did I manage to do this for if not you

Lilaced thing

The soft rustle of  beetle wings

In air that is warm and gray

And is not strong

But there, is there to carry us past it