My moods can be full of surprises and my words
Are not the world they said, and I believe it all. They
Do, though, influence others, although the beat is
Not the heart for them, those few minutes of deep
Arrhythmia, its double words stringing out synthetic
Phrases, a tiresome conviction describing gaps
Between meaning and a truth, sinkholes in this
Fleeting landscape of happiness, a world, but not
This one. So when I call out for you at night and
My heart triggers the room as you move closer,
Is there any world elsewhere but this? My moods
Do not have any limit to the known. We have noises
Coming and going beneath the door, the visible
Disappearing with the wavelength of swimming
Light. Birds all the while are dictating essays but
When we transcribe them we have gibberish, pert-
Wee, sta-wah, and I’m sure they are right. But
There are exemplary types of reason, language
That armature my moods, as they might articulate
My wrist, and meanwhile flowers pucker shut as if
Alum were in the air tonight. And under it all there’s
This under thumping, one breath perfecting the next
When i see you, and I encourage the spring colt in
My chest ridden by my visions, as micro-moths drift
Through the evergreens as another mood wells up
And I am, once again, full, no, brimming with surprise.

…

G. E. Schwartz, lives in Upstate New York, and is the author of Only Others Are (LEGIBLE PRESS), THINKING IN TONGUES (Hank’s Loose Gravel Press), Odd Fish (Argotist Press), Murmurations (Foothills Press), and The Very Light We Reach for (LEGIBLE PRESS), & work in The Brooklyn Rail, Alaska Review, Ghost City, & Fracture, among others, and he’s in the band The Solomons… recordings at Bandcamp.