We enter other objects more loudly
than a boundary,
speak in the voice of laundry,

which hangs from the sublime
or another line in time—
let's say dissemblance, the fine

tuning of a bone or hope,
when you give such names to "no"
as befits its station. The Pope

elopes with an exclamation,
and love becomes a love infection.
Now structure's in a state of elation.

The others of course are fleeing
into the future, where as a mode of being
nothingness will do by freeing

your outer self from your inner.
The sun still shines there and here,
and in all matters love is the winner.

A fine and subtle darkness settles on
your mind, edgy as a song,
random as description in the long

gust of thought that brought us here.
In syntax as in prayer,
the gods are lonely makers.

He, She, and It define the darkness
with a singular lack of apartness,
a universal smudge where the Loch Ness

Monster can go to disappear,
a hole in the mind where fear
is a sullen theology, nearer

unto Not. The truth of desire
is how it turns to fire
or kinds of effacement higher

than simple erasure. The task
is not a question of asking
what you're after then basking

in its slow arrival like sun
on a ledge. To sing is un-
required yet not undesired: a fun

house ideology. As Ike said to Tina,
"Put some stank on it," meaning Tina's
songs needed meat attention. Singing

is a way of casting up your soul
or at least unfolding it. The tolled
bell rings long after sound is old.

Waking into sense or sinking through sleep,
you take your ghost to school, keep
the message distant until it leaps

within. Someone has already spoken
of the "sweetness of the field," language broken
on the edge of meaning. Are you hoping

or knowing? You saw a truck that said,
"therapeutic bread." That was all it said.
So as the camera moves over the red

scenery, the task is already shaking—
an excess of attention flaking
over cold pages, and love is awakened.

—Paul Hoover