Fall-in/Fall-out

Our boots grind partial prints
in what looks like sand
but is really sounds
made so strongly, so loudly
so thickly and longly
that they become things
solid like ground,
ground enough to walk on at least
and you and me.

That's what the world
is made of I heard.

Sounds.

Like an orchestra playing
very slowly.

Every now and then
the sound stops
just for a moment
and then
we can hear something
else
not for the first time or the
last
but still
we can hear it
and we know that we do
and are surprised that we never noticed before because
it's just so loud.

But then again,
maybe we don't hear anything at all?

Whatever the case,
We don't notice
when the string section starts up again.

Instead:

Hold hands because
we are molded together
from the blast, not love.

The radiation
wave's already rolled through town.
The worst is over.

Our skin is grafted
below the wrists and some blood
starts to run between.

I don't know how it happened,
but where I used to have a
hand, now I have you.

"Is your blood going
into my body?" you ask.
I don't know, really.

We start to believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me -- under cover
of skin and muscle.

Waves of earth pulsed through
the city and carried us
like ocean liners

to a refugee
camp made of electronics
and old plaster casts.

We wait in the soup
lines for a message from the
underground network

that we still believe
exists, that we dreamt into
existence at least.

Messages don't come.
And if they do, we can't tell.
It's all just the same.

It's not here with us,
but we are united by
where it isn't. Some

strings of nothing that
we imagine are something
are holding us tight.

I've never felt so
comforted by anything
besides this nothing

that we made up for
each other and then donned like
Hawaiian flowers.

We are going to
join the underground network
as soon as we can.

Someone said agents
are running supplies from one
city to the next.

You don't see them come.
You don't see them go. They don't
do either one maybe.

"Is your blood running
into my body?" you ask.
I don't really know.

Do we still believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me? It's turning black
and we're wondering.

In either case, it's
running out just as fast as
it runs in, okay?

So let's do something
quick about this before
we go all the way
in or out.


The sky is ashed over, black and grey.
And on some days, we
gather around the General.
He has strung
out some nerves which he has collected from men
and formed
into the shape of a man
just there on the ground in the yard.

He sits us in stadium stands
and tells us to wait for it to dance.
We wait.

The nerves dimly vibrate
and emit a gentle hum,
maybe,
but they don't dance.

There is popcorn and soda
and a generally good feeling.
It's fine here and I'm starting to like you.

But I still can't hear you.