First I Look at the Poem

Not the clothes of thought, the bones,
And these bones, friends, are more bent
Than neat lines and fixed counts hint.

We know when you look through us
Like glass. We like it. See that
Shade fly up? That’s you. Don’t crash.

We know we’re like glass. We break.
Throw the light back in your face.
In time, like all glass, we’ll sag.

We were made from things that were
Made from things that were waves first.
Watch us walk. Watch how we shake,

How we try to hold the sky
From the ground, how we slow down
When we ache, then give a wave.

Words, Too, Are Hosts

The ghosts have their ghosts.
The fact of a word,
A mark or a sign,
Is a husk if none
Knows what it might mean.

From where do the souls
Of signs, what they mean,
Come? Flesh thinks it’s flesh
But can’t think so if
Not for signs with souls.

Words can say it’s us
Who mean, us, not flesh,
But if no flesh knows
What it is we mean,
Then who speaks for us?

You want to know what
Makes up your lost souls,
Gods, ghosts, and so forth?
What it is in words
And flesh both that means—

A wave with no points,
No peaks, no troughs—storm
That needs flesh for fuel,
Words and signs for forms,
But is no thing. Means.