From panic to this birth breath

 

Panic

 

We begin in discord

in the poem of the goat-footed god

 

Pan

of panic

and pandemic 

 

But then I promise to breathe again

only when I remove my self as the obstacle that became me

 

So

 

Walk

Don’t walk!

 

Fuck

Don’t fuck!

 

Panic

Don’t panic!

 

Our rule is you’ll never know

when you’re following rules and when you’re not.

 

You’re a child of diversity

enslaved to uncertainty.

 

You were given gods as you were given empires

that make and break the rules.

 

You were left playing in the garden

when that horror began.

 

Look

Don’t look!

 

You look like a random child who wouldn’t exist without war

without end

without the breath of labour

and the final breath

 

I am the fright

and the trip you didn’t see

as you were walking backwards

 

not walking

not fucking

 

The rule is panic

and nomadic

 

And someone called and I heard no echo

but heard all about the panic spread by

miasmas, clouds and black holes

 

and I loved you more than any virus

more than the ways and byways

that led you to me

 

before all signs were pointed in wrong directions

before the twisting of reinforcing

 

before grounds were made immaterial

reimagined while no one was looking

 

I said that if you can you must

and yet you cannot

 

you deliver nothing

but doom

and blackmail with a smile.

 

The world is the image in the mind of its being

The pantheist in you is not grasping that pandemic

 

and panic

that peoples all your minds.

 

 

Flower shop

 

That involuted orchid

opens out to be

its own question

and proffers its own beginning

 

Buy back the terror

of the touching fingertips

of young tulips

that regard only themselves

 

Never ask the roses

what they really want

Never choose them

nor be pricked into actions

 

the end of which

is not in sight

 

 

 

One rose, then, for my endless love

 

I saw you in a forest

just as a welcome shower of rain began

 

I couldn’t tell how it was

that you moved like that

 

between the growing trees

with such animal limbs

 

Could someone tutor me?

The graces of your soul

 

translate to gestures

and the gentle way your hand

 

may have touched

How little do I understand?

 

The forest gives way to a garden

that you overlook

 

fresh in gumboots

Your mind is fully at play

 

the earth gives softly beneath your feet

Could the thought be more vivid?

 

But just in case you didn’t see

the slip of paper

 

nailed to your tree

What on earth could it say?

 

The crude and beautiful word or

not a word nor even art

 

but just a childish doodle

a drawing of the heart

 

 

Let’s wander

 

The park has no gate

and so it asks us for nothing

 

The lawn spreads away behind us

but there’s no sign to tell where we were

 

Life like this is an unmarked surface

on which we cannot help but stand

 

on a trail of pretexts

And when we part

 

one of us will be the lesser

found lurking here wondering

 

For all we speak no one will hear

the words we came to say

 

We will’ve forgotten the softness of skin

the brownness of our eyes

 

and the temper of the day

Branded darkly

 

there’s the question-mark on the surface

and in our tone of voice

 

Did I hear thee well then

murmuring this conversation’s closed?

 

The park admits all comers

but the lawn admits no answers

 

 

A lesson, then, on College Hill

 

Learn about what a body can do

what cannot be put to paper or to flame

and when to empty the mind like a bin

 

When full daylight barely lights the Way

there are too many objects

 

When all possibilities

will have been

recollected

comprehended

realised and

half forgotten

 

then

and only then

may the universe sigh

and once again contract

 

 

Panic

 

Love

Don’t love!

 

Breathe

Don’t breathe!

 

Think

Don’t think!

 

There’s a growth on your thoughts

as it spins from your gut

 

gets twisted and knotted thoughts out

unknotted

 

We are tied for love

and bodies know what occurs next

as they cannot help but breathe

that birth breath

as if each breath

even their last

were a rebirth.

 

It’s motion that muddies the water

But stillness clarifies the soul

 

What you think your soul is

becomes your next cry

 

as the mind’s in struggle

and every breath’s an effort

 

or a push against the weight of others

lasting till failure

 

To decide who will write whose epitaph

and fret about it no more

 

means to go where the breath is

the only thing left to attend to

 

without division

It’s a tender and pliant baby thought

 

a sensation of rain on a sweaty body

and an unknown lady who smiled

 

or the heart reaching through the earth

for someone in distress

 

a force of silence

an end of waiting

 

for nothing but

this birth breath

 

 

For Frankie Chu

September 2023