DSQ > Spring 2008, Volume 28, No.2

Crip Time

I.

I just sit here, long breath

you, and I, can find that lemonade time: tea, coffee, drip

time with him as she loosens the buckle, you drop the crutch

if we want to find time for us breathing, with a sip

we need to make time in our production line

and in the making of time, here, the circle wheeling,

is our dawn, our dusk.

My time is not mine

Our time is not ours

But time, time, we say

and when were you last there? Not a tick or a tock

side by side I am still loading her chair

Catch my breath, here, for you, my eye has no time

as my lid beats down — no sight for the digital numbers

Let them eat cake, I say, let them infest the office

Just because

is no reason to rise

just because

is a reason to query

just because

is not just, not just, only just

good enough

for some, in time,

not me

II.

Ein Augenblick: wink of the eye

only just only just just now

The corridor is empty, of course, and the elevator is long gone.

Empty chairs, row upon row, pages of a thin book

fingering gaps I read a dance of expansion, a past

breath of width, the wheel turned, just so

parked first at an angle, and, with decorous shuffle

metal legs uncross elegantly, table plain in lift off

the structure breathed out and settled around you.

We all turned to find the next opening, time's gap

the pause of frantic steer or calm maneuver

and we learned to hold the beads of time, I, and you

as we blinked, and the room shifted, all our breaths

condensed into a parchment, a palimpsest,

scraped raw knees, dinged sides, yet inscribed

in this empty corridor, the abandoned hall, cold tea.

Production methods, assembly, a line, half-forgotten:

we danced here.

III.

Summer suns outside, red hot stars move

as I burn a shadow into the ground. The silhouette

is uneven, wide, melded: heavy cast iron.

My time is not mine: drifts away, steam sears, oceans

I remember the continent of the crips

gaps and openings

their words of comfort

glancing tectonics

a shudder

a wink

just because, sometime,just becausefor a cause

Our time is not ours:

bedtime

morning time

lunch

midday

blood beat and sugar scale, insulin's tick of drowsy bees

I am here   she is not   now   he is   we are   and I hurt

but what might be just

might be just that

just all there is

But time, time, we say, we pray: whose mouths mumble belated,

lately, too early, they are at the wrong time, again uptight and tense

with the beat of an eye, unspin, unravel, and stop,

only stop.

Say a word that opens the gate, and rolls out and out, between us

time the word, I say, let it beat like an astonished dove

as the waters recede and abandoned shapes drip dry in the morning sun

just circle

time


disabled lilacs

disabled worlds tumble in the lilac machine

disabled dreams try out love for size

disabled machines wheel in the night

disabled love delights in mountain terrain

disabled lilacs smell of the ice worlds

disabled mountains hold us open to the sky

disabled nights shudder with aching gears

disabled skies make the world disappear

I float on my pillow

navigate the veins

sing to you

dance a disabled world

A version of disabled lilacs is part of an experimental videopoem you can access at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCU1MHyRFC4.
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