"Consequences upon Arrival (iv)."
"We stood in recognition of our particular form.
Where in times of crisis
The tributaries, osseous and moaning,
converged to enter dry ground.
Against abandonment.
Orchards.
Against analysis, astonishing gorges.
Well-coated seed.
But the democratizing force, it was said,
is the terror that will always reach you no matter how
withdrawn the cavity or breath.
There's always something to work with and to refuse a scar.
The voices who said this would then disappear.
Poof.
Released across trails of afternoon light.
The thesis was unrecognizable: fields in its only color.
Mountains eroded to their rims.
This had sexual connotations, and actually several forms
took place.
Luxurious.
Invasive.
With byproducts that remained distant and nearly impossible
to drain.
Valleys blurred.
Made critical the hours that fed only from their depressions.
That did not regard learnedness.
Or rest in its light.
We observed the cleft faces.
The conditions under which each depression was
an appropriate place to look.
The sustainable valleys, evident in their fortitude.
The unburdened valleys multiplied into themselves
once filled to their rims.
The gorged organic valley.
The trampled valley.
The bastard valley.
The valley without proper circulation.
Without forms that could speak to its diminishing alterity
even when the alterity was most observed to be diminished.
Unlike the openings of animals with four legs or two,
any preparation obliterated the contents with light.
Stepping out from the orifices, a voice called to us, saying:
To arrive everywhere from nowhere is the one true gift.
Thus, we didn't understand those who
were happy to trade their whole consciousness
for a luminous horizon.
With its clumps and diffusions of literal prison.
For a well-battered corpse.
Yet each day its anatomy and consequences grew.