Two Blue Summers

To see an affirmation              in this process           requires great strength—

            that cut-open souls          exposed to prying sky            veins visible path-ways

might become common wealth          have utility as aqua-ducts            even sewers

            but that presupposes agency,         knife-blade accuracy     viability of private

resources      who am I to say         that myself deconstructed       holds any interest?

            Perhaps the prosaic          nature of affect          is the bluest blue of all,     blue

folded into its own uselessness           like a blue wave collapsed           on a shore—

            yet there is a (strange!) sense      that one must continue, must        or else

life will denote nothing            and that, true though it might be      is intolerable—

            all this for Justine         I met, held, kissed         superb senselessness

that extends           through perceptions of reality         senseless, yet linked

            to shattered possibilities of sense          and to particulars        (faces, places, names)

which deliver illusions              of permanence that never was          never will be,

            ultimately “blue”       even when looking “up,” not down      the same—

Here is one way out—            to say the names          in that facticity

            see a different blue, “electric,”          not closed, undecided      open to mixture

dynamic Selfhood, sky as workable          most importantly        “present-minded”

            blue manifest as “Now”         blue breaths        movements       forward motions—

Justine need not be      Beatrice         “Blue Lady”     is enough    one head effaces

            another          I am hers, for now, in text          “blue text” is droll       making love

is droll too        drollery as a mode of fullness, acceptance—         “don’t stop believing”

            subjectivity need not self-annihilate        I can put two summers together     create

a third,     richer composite        perceptions do not have to burn       nor do we,    awash

            blue repose, reposed blue         all around, eager        intermingled          “boned”