New (old) RED by AD Every year on my birthday, I usually write a poem. This is one from the evening when I turned 21!

Red

hard, the way.

we’re built,

to never ever wonder why.

Child

Keep your balance

Don’t fall one way

Or another

War has come up 3 times

Body is 6:33 a.m.

Winging an investigation

On my newly fucked

And feeling child

No people from my past remain

For they have changed as have I

At the foot of the moment, when you feel

Your whole being,

Whole life, every person, every poem, every thought, every pulse, every taste, every

Fuck, every kiss, every face, every sight, every ground, every hiss, every footstep, every breath,

Every song, every brain soaking rain, every ink-stain

Child diseased said they

Life squeezed

Brain left out too long in the rain

Mischievous this child, too old for her youth

6:33p.m. turned to 6:33a.m. turned to light again

Carries the stars away

Stoned

The cyclone

Stops

Can see

Here. . .

There’s no one exactly

Cause your all where you are

Faces

I still never know

How to see

Those

Luminous

Each one that passes paralyses

Secret that pulses through beast, breast, breath, body

That distant horn

Those colored lights

From the place I left

To the place I go

That violin bow rubs against my body

Music, far off, but edible

Be it the moon,

A traffic light,

Headlights, a face

Lying on a scaly fluorescent chameleon muse

You have to remember

To forget

In my room watching

A pale peach sea through

Black silhouettes of Persephone

Fingers stained

And in my bed, a boy sleeps

Snow & ice

On the ground and I am 21 years old.

Pressing souls

Footplates in fresh white snow

Cryptic circles wrapped in fangs

Blurry designs

Flesh in light

Negatives, orange & black

x-rays, she took

Of our oral, mortal sense of right

Balance in calm jittery fright

Just being here

Not letting the breath fall out of my ear

Keeps me occupied

The past and the future always close by

Wooing to take me away

Like an eternal dream

The hiss of the primordial stream rushes through us all

Taking us away with each moment

The pressing of all the souls we have been

Converging, merging, submerging, waving goodbye

Like blurry flesh & faces

—1999