No Help for That | Jackie Clark

Consistency is a joke with more than one punch line,
for instance the elastic tendencies of our locus,
like if there was no night, who would need the word
day, like collecting methods hinged on pronouns,
orientating around the pronoun with concern for the second
person: a troubled place; an intrusive voice; the language
of advertising. My governing pronoun versus your governing tense,
wading forward, unit by unit. We are building things,
like what happens when eagerness ends, like to want
something is something of lack, like any tragedy could easily
be a comedy if everybody would just sit down. Leave the door
open a bit so pace begs the question of closure, like your multiple
“I”s whereas the second person implies the first. You said
if dwarfed by the universe go live a big life somewhere quietly.
I said if without roles, choose one: solitary or constant. Lover,
I have yet to love you & believe that might be best. Last night
the graves reflected the lights of my passing, staggered & illuminated
like a vesseled filigree, a braided dare unmasked, like infant
premonitions in the friction of two rocks. Roof tops
are still safe places, a very top with one last exit—what is romance
but good lighting, a generalized statement spoken then conquered
or a solitary organ, hollowed but lipped around its edge?
There is a seriousness here that we are responsible for & I can
press it down so thin that no one notices.