cicadian

an experiment of sorts

cicada shell rustles distaste on tongue,
mud in eyes now like blood on knees
and a fistful of teeth in the belly of a cavern, 
low fire and smoke in lung. forgetting 
shift-shoft of crickling crackling wings, plastered on plaster, 
dust suffocates limbs like a mental ward pillow
and a noose hung high, rafters in the sky, each cloud just 
a moment closer. knotted fingers untangle into sigyls of non-motion
and running away, feet pounding surf of highway to a neverwhere, 
to a place beyond stale existence, crashing somewhere 
out in the middle of dusk and morning,
to cidadian to circadian 
pulse. 


pulse in hands, in throat and jaw, beating reminder 
of the jawbone hanging on the wall, 
sticky sweet with honey and hibernation, a first lesson
in how to keep yourself alive.
pa caught recoil in heavy hands this winter,
taught survival like a veteran of war;
he said that this hand goes there and twist that and snap and 
wait until the feet stop kicking, that's when:
keep soft hands, let them curl as if cradling them on their way


but hands have hardened under a chisel of bitterness; marshwater
splashes under beating bullfrog stomachs, croak,
creak, cracking across water and reeds
read callous under survivalist fingers--
there are magnolias in the heat and they crackle underfoot
like old parchment with ink leaking with each step;
a decade more and maybe they'll be gone, 
gone like you are gone, 
past the horizon now, swampy and sharp.
your feet are sore, fingers full of sour thorns. 
your mouth tastes of sleep and cicadas.