I grab a banjo with its wood
polished by the being’s beamy meaning
and gradually I see myself again amidst musical comets
I am my only present
I say it again and the echo liquefies both moon and words
yesterday I am the future
repeats my yonder image
and irreal fingers touch the world’s tremulous horizon

there’s a tornado between me and you
wherein I search myself – a bird-of-paradise flower in my hand
among the darkly faces from the past
that flow into my blood at lightspeed
while decapitated bodies
dance hula on the other side of time

I am the negative memory of the sky
I’d like to cry but crying falls down crumpled
into the halo in between two angels
I’d like to scream but words bear fire meanings
that collapse beyond the words themselves
I’d like to touch you but my hand slithers
on time’s convex surface
yesterday I’m on the verge of shredding a thousand lotus flowers
from my chunk of future
rolled over on the streets lit by electric lap steel guitars
the soldier sits on an old buoy instead of chair
in the shack where lives the laundress with fly-bitten thighs
solidified light cracks the walls
made of dirty planks
while it caresses her flabby breasts like ragdolls
until the fretwork
the ropes discarded on silken cocoons
the artificial anemones and black stockings
smeared with gas oil
the clarinet rotting on the stack of old newspapers
become one with a ragtime
for eleven instruments

it’s late and bats traverse
“the net and lapidary structure of motifs
the dry and sharp linearity
of brass interjections
the explosive incisiveness of rhythms
the asymmetric disposition of measures
and the frequent shifting of accents
the discursive ellipses
the rough timbral oppositions”

I grab a banjo with furbished skin