Amish Trivedi: From 'FuturePanic': 'What We Remembered Before'

What We Remembered Before

 

A face climbing

atop an old       

starter motor,    

buried down

and spit-taken

ahead of slender

 

white ether gloves and

parade sheets pulled

over and beginning to

absorb the leaded

ground. Given way

again to

 

another incendiary thin

sprawl but never

 

                                    again, a word

                                    that means a

                                    finger tracing the

 

paths along the arch

of skin near any

finger other than your

 

own: a set                of known

                                    hands soldered together

                                    that even heated will

                                   

                                    begin to crown.

 

Fixtures that break against the ice: moon

light parches a dry throat to

choke and stall out. In way before ash,

we heard vibrations of soil we reached

into, a shaded space beyond your

mouth that gives growth to others.

 

As a memory

just as it was done before

clearings came. Another sensation that

 

comes in when otherness vacates. A descent

and catching the hands in an escape

pose, bringing brickarms

to spin into another form so

brilliant the eyes retract into

their holster. Rearranged

 

to form new compounds

built on the generations

of freedom we

rebelled from,

 

the glass lip tasted

 

but prevented from

blistering under a

skin we've already

known. The next

 

year is always easier

than this one but I

 

                        realize I'm expected

                        to speak in projections

 

that never seem

to clear the teeth

 

utterly.

 

This sequestration, our lungs alighting in

series to develop

a texture its own,

a stigma we designed on time divided. Out pasture

ignition point, the right mixture but rich

with air or ventilated improperly. The

gaze we have again. In

 

the pressured moments beyond

this one, we'll seek

 

against and filtrate our

devoured like a steadied destruction

we cannot believe, alleviated

before us. In the summer the

 

ships go through

the bridge and

 

we hear a cantilever of

swallowed dusk

 

reintroduce it to a

native, painted earth. We

 

                                    were what we ought to

                                    have been all a-

                                    long, not just a

 

reminder of the room

before the

 

reverberation. This tipped

another time

 

without being heard,

satisfied to

fear. Where we were

 

is against a wall too

tall to hold

 

us backwards in an

 

ocean. A dream too

buried by dirt

to carry another

feeling alongside

it. Split along a

vein, adequate again, I

know. This or

 

any justification to

breathe alone in your

reference besides

the terror that

 

seethes through

an absent language. An

                                    absence sustained through

                                    notion, anything matter lacks

                                    it collects as prey, a retraction.

 

If anything that is unseen shows

the depth of another shift,

 

we'll realign ourselves to be

any different kind of

place which cannot remain

 

whenever an unheard system tenses and

recovers. Our tract, re-purposed to

 

                                                begin in seas of

                                                matter— axon, a

                                               

being. Let the litmus be our light

ahead. Your back arcing there

somewhere, a little exposed but

 

I cover my eyes to

unsee you and cover my arms so that I

may undeceive. Say the same thing

 

you always say to everyone else but say

it to the gathered room. In

 

memory, speech

begins as a seed

 

piercing. The things we are begin in

a spark from

a hand and out again, covered,

mistaken and divulged as

certainty.

 

Weaned hour, deplored moment on

the way to another envelopment. Bray

above a roar

 

                        to sound inflexible, really,

                        and putting recognition

                        on. Regain

 

a swollen block where

we will to unknow,

move about the surrounding

spaces. A light out on

 

                                    a stair

                                    well to

                                    ascertain we

 

begin again, a glow too

welcoming to speak

through. Though the air

seems to push us, it's

a retribution from sin. After

 

worry resolves, it

plays, ringing in and over

where everything that

can grow

does not. If

 

our floods are the same, I hope

what we know is masked by

shame and brings sense back

to the land we settled.

 

[NOTE.  Amish Trivedi has for some time been a close associate at Poems and Poetics, some of his earlier work having appeared in the postings of February 25, 2011 and October 7, 2012.  In the present offering he steps forward as a poet working at full capacity, to create, like the best of us, a poetry that tests his & our furthest capabilities & fears.  I wait to see what follows with great anticipation.  (J.R.)]