The Celestial Set-Up

The Celestial Set-Up

The Celestial Set-Up

imagine staring up into an open umbrella
                         you're holding as it pivots

after the defeat after the ruin
                        and the flawed reconstruction
           what's left but drawing the body into
its own circle spinning around an axis

not like a small country flailing spikes
          from its malignant crown
                               but in star clusters
islands breaking into archipelagos

by this I mean a network of events
                       or love moving on the epidermis
a crackle on a hand
          in the small distance unravelling in tenses
between your past and my future

                      performing a horizontal music
in relation to the touch of breath
          or the edge of this poem falling into space
where every revolution is still happening in your skin

when does holding out your hand
                    become a question
which way to the centre
         and how will I know when I get there
when the city is both a practice of scars and
         a pattern of what's in the air
                       in other words in song
an accumulation of detail invisible until you're dead

for now we wander slowly about the star sphere
        in a discontinuity that exists as aperture
to defer the sound of an ending not to
        stop there just look
                       don't look at the sun