I have skirted the blotted shadows of a scarcely
skirted madness, circled the sodded
walls of a boarded-up
sadness, come out spotted, stained, shaken

I have stuck my head into the maddening hiss of
a whirling weedwacker line because I
felt only the urge to do it &
nothing else—blind, led as galaxy
pulling sun, in turn pulling planets, in turn
holding each of us to our tenets

words are nothing, and still
there is nothing

I have forgotten
every sentence I have ever
assembled and yet I’ve somehow
remembered how it felt to have culled it

but I only feel when I wag
or touch, when I bray
or cuff, when I fly or
fuck, the primitive
skull empty of thought