In response to Broken Theater

somewhere between now
and all the moments not
now a thread in the web
was plucked, a solemn
reverb widowing out
like ripples in a pond
from an empty bottle
it did not choose to eat.
In the 30th minute
of a day much like today
and not unlike yesterday,
a table sits wordless
as a man hands an apple
to a woman who knows
nothing of apple except
eat, who knows nothing
of man except lie,
who knows nothing
of herself except here.
Here she is not mother,
lover, or wife, she exists
to fill a chair. Had he
asked her to perform
mother she would play
moon to all gardens,
to be wife and she would
be woman in red dress
next to piano, to be lover
and she would say
not here and you know why.
Tell me how one form
can contain so many
functions, so many breaths
in so many different directions.
At the center of this woman’s web
sits a small hope, all hope,
hope like unto a dreamer
who has not known
gravity, not known rain,
not known why she keeps
pulling sand out of her pockets,
keeps pulling skeletons out
to sheath them in ghost,
praying this time let them
be holy, parades them through
and over and around and near
the sanctuary, the grand theater
for the brightest specters, how
bright specters make all of us
haunted. Now, she thinks
of August, the way we thread
heat through both summer
and decay, a full bounty
of impermanence, so many
impermancences spring
out of each other only
to make more and more
does not mean better, promise
being a word meant but best left
unsaid because you cannot unsay it
once you say it cannot unknow
how the trick is done once you know
cannot unkiss the lips cannot unclench
the fist cannot hand the same apple
back to the same man in the same time

so why bother?