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hacking at time daily
we try to live outside the ages

I pick wilting wild flowers
you steal a flask from a dim shop

feed my bed's mouth
to sedate the pretty windows
that bring us an ancient light

we observe the younger planets
love on their crusts
you take your grandmother's sowing kit
from a trapdoor into the attic

knit us both kimonos
each stitch hidden
like the circuitry that keeps us
from eternity to entwine

go as far into total ecstasy
as the rent will allow
yearning for a day
that redeems all days
and the wildflowers
stiffen on my ghostly desk
where nightly I carry your girl's body
and your old man's eyes into song

and even as we cradle each other's
best bodily moments
in this rigged oasis
we are tramping sidewalks outside

strangers to the ice age
beneath a shared lace-edged
white umbrella

first brother and sister
to the strays that live
in the shadows of banks
where accounts ran out
like parched canals long ago

I hold the spine of your dress
as you lean to pet
the crowd of kittens
peering from a constructed ditch
one winces at my cigarette
I spit it out
into a maze of channeled steam

we cast our nets on the nowhere
gather a nucleus
from which we are born screaming
and lipsticked, fern-lashed, salt painted

in the moss-lined cavern of a glacier
we are vamping it up
for a night on the last lit town.