Matt Daly: Feast of Flowers

I watch the pot but it is still boiling
I toss in a cube     a shard     a chip     a glacier
This is the age of Orlando
The city on a hill is an exhausted animation
The kingdom never had any magic
There are too many captains of blood
It is a small world

Virginia Woolf wrote into being the timelessness and fluidity of gender
The circumstances of the teenage boy’s body by the bridge are under investigation
Trashcans at Disney World are clear in their instruction     Waste Please

This is the age of the end of ice
I watch stones around the fire split into the coals
When I was young I was often afraid to say a word

After all, we pour cities of trash into the sea
I want all projectiles to never land
The circumstances of grieving are under investigation

I used to float down the river until I was too cold to speak
I drifted under the bridge from one side to the other
The only way to stop my lips from turning blue was to talk
I want hate to drift away on the currents of an open ocean
I want hate to lose the power of speech altogether

My heart keeps breaking the tick-tock of its rhythm
All I want to be struck by today are the voices of children
Two weeks ago I watched them celebrate their graduation
I want to cache all the bullets in a lost place in Neverland
When I was young my heart was made of water

When I was a toddler I loved to wade
Among the marsh flowers     the eyes of alligators
This is the age of Carolina
In every state there are captains of blood speaking their unfamiliar language

I want to be four friends walking toward you
I want to cut holes in my pockets big enough for stones to slip through
I want all bullets to land in the trash heap     the incinerator     history

No one emerges from the muck once succumbing to the mouth of the leviathan
I want murder to wear itself out in the lap pool of its aftermath

What would it be like to wake up a different body
What would it be like to imagine my life as another body
To live through time is to live through many bodies
The melting pot sits on the slagheap of rhetoric

This is the age of the end of gender
It is a small world     I want     you alive     your body

—
Copyright 2016 Matt Daly