"Dark Tuning."
This is a poem for Jamaal.
"Dark Tuning."
"The hearing aid was still warm from his ear
when he slipped it into mine.
And what I remember isn't the brief blazing
of his fingers along my ear lobe,
but that he turned away after.
Which seemed right, since we should be alone the first time
we're allowed the frequency of each unheard
percussion in this world.
I could have stayed in those tangling songs
for longer than I'll ever live.
Like hours I'd wait standing on Congress Ave. for the horizon
to harden into the violet of bats unskinning the sky
into a mantle of noiselessness.
As a child, I understood that the dark
turning I saw hanging from a ledge in Carlsbad Caverns
was love.
Two bats climbing instinctively into each other,
closing themselves into a soundless eight
chambered hymn only they could shatter.
I understand now it takes a village of savage stalactites
to show me I live for the dripping and speechless ache.
For the vault of your mouth.
If love is learning to gnaw and be gnawed, to be stringed
and strung up, let me be your unformed instrument.
Be the steadfast eyes of the luthier, bent in lamplight,
who contours this excess away from me so that the melodies
you know, I will echo.
Even in this quiet, will echo."