T o b i K a s s i m —

Tide Fractals

Developments between the bridge and the high

way passage disassemblies of clouds

and colors relay their commentaries

on the built environment bridge-split shine

of pink off sea blue I thought this could be Rose’s

sky a song for the middle name slow gap

between all the lives you could have lived

like clouds endured separation from the rest

of the flock while earth’s rotation blows

i feel a window closing time seeping out

i’ll only have to close twenty shutters to catch

this sifted light one hundred questions in

-accurate for these colors none well-formed

or concerned with the day’s prevailing style.

I grow concerned with the prevalent sky

and rumors dehiscing in its recesses

ambivalence is opportune I used

to know how to name things I could decipher

distance between what seemed and what meant

by leaping off the curb to land on the curb

when it next appeared. when it next appeared

the curb seemed wider than the sidewalk

interstitial vantage constricts on land

a face I could have been vanishes

in glass a mist of flour worked through the air

like snow over flat characters closer

to the clouds I stretched my arms wide for drag

your hand reached out from under

an awning

From under your hands an awning

your veins had wind creases

like the sky seams of color

punctured above us a sun-

lit greenness pulses under the screen

of your palm as I hold its pages--

there must be stories here I wager

against the sun otherwise how

to reach such homeostatic enclosure—

I feel dimly inside form for structure

but its bones are unfixed alternating

bolts of light and nerve whatever pierces

releases a sound an exhale like tides

in a body of water called a sound

The body in water is called a sound

my body in water becomes a sound

cloud like the sound in the mind slippery

as nomenclature you rename the flower

after the bright time of its openness

to young visitors I thought morning

should be a name for a flower maybe

There’s just that one dove

in mourning then we could be accurate

about variances in nights’ openness

cultivars of a hibiscus moonlight

under the moniker of a rose one

differentiated like you by sub-name

pink center, veined paper skin, long stamen

pink throat, veins in paper, long stamen

a morning flowers in the extended

straddle of a balancing act pistils

push pollen across a fence a lingual

occurrence a child can hear generations

of epiphany compacted behind

sound’s foliate body and shapes her mouth

to mimic the sun’s historical awe

with stamina as the tongue imitates

blood’s spirals in the chest you taste the air

test a channel’s clarity like antennae

extended past the fence toward signal’s noisy

end I re-tread shake golden beads off

my head back toward your distributing feet

Toward your distributing feet I shake gold

constraints off my body to widen freely

in another’s awareness but my self

is so quick to bandage the wide

voice I open in the sea but restless

turn to shore I said I drifted apart

then re-confluenced but there are cells still

to divide selves to hide from discovery

we sheltered in tide island’s high shadow

our feet squirted minnows from seaweed crabs

exchanged shells in the shallows we brushed sea

rocks to see our blood tugged loose into surf

our strung flesh rippled under currents

as if the sea’s recklessness was free

an abundance ribboning form’s constraints

Horizon undulant with boneless freedom

Of words of tongue a tidal testament

a pulse could reverberate forever

in the current pick up a rootless floater

& ripple through the drift brain the water

is pushing toward shore pink threads

in jellyfish rise to the surface no

ripples in the ocean echo their form

what water holds and doesn’t hold fluid

cells walls in bloom ions I was breathing

salt through my pores my flagella awake

to the coming change in tideheight

water’s picture of the clouds moving apart

between us eons of blood inside us

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