January is the longest month After the cacophony Of the morning’s war We lost the world in chipped cups Bird demands and traffic ricochets Rope burn and gravel skies Dead teabags high as Babylon Cigarette ends crushed into the floor Stations on the map Of harsh, devoured moments Crooked and splayed and almost immediately forgotten There is no running water To keep the dead at bay The crisscross handle bites at your wrist The throes of something Desperately still alive As if you inadvertently held In a stigmate hand Knocking at the walls Lazarus emerging The day suddenly brazen Climbing hand on hand To the second floor A smudge on your chest From wounded lath dislodged When you scraped against the parapet The surface lunar dry But beneath, a rich wet earth That smelt of hungry winter Tugging at your coat and hair The building has no face We are in the socket of its eye The pages of Salverte’s Philosophy of Magic That you translated In blemishes of ink Blown on a rising wind Through the sunrise swelling blindness For the unfathomed dead to read
