[syndicate] as older

[Alan Sondheim]

as older

as older i grow, the crystalline world crystallizes,
my brain harpoons through silicon and salts, membranes torn,
shrunk, fissured, cleft; i burn those wounds with theory,
language stitched, sutured, mouth speaking tongues,
barely a rhythm left, semen slips on its own time, space
imagines healing until unhealing, lips parted, cliffed
memories and recitals, i learn to veer away. until memory
returns, harsh, making no difference to others,
alive. by then i am gone as the world's cleft teeters,
sore, sworn without me, by then, there is then then, hard,
and obdurate. i cannot mouth, dirt, names are that river
of worlds, known, unraveled, soaked, drowned in mind only,
born in mind only, death's whisper of a certain afternoon,
moaned, muted, towards no one or other, i make, am, fluid,
borne stones, cairn, already futured past, memorial. they
have not grown, old, nor young, they have not grown