Staging the Invisible
        Tears are liquefied brain.
        —Samuel Beckett

Except for the odd ha-ha here and there,
a little stream or brook,
you can ghost-read love me
into the last (and negated word)
I would like my love to die.
We crave enchantment
even though it makes us gullible.

The etymology of attraction
has to do with the lure,
a song of a fish at the end of a line.

She lives now in a foreign version
of growing together.
Agit ensemble (if we truly grow).
Maybe fleeing east
from the islands of sensibility,
we've pulled ourselves into a lie.
We scoundrels of the world.
Readjusted apertures.
My door remains imperceptibly ajar.

All at once, a foreboding shadow:
staging the invisible.
If the latter is lucky, blessed with an eye,
our lives are endless.
The way a cat is about the house.

Our language consists of silence.
The language of action:
a slamming door, a cup of water to the face.
Silent figures still.

Love is a clumsy retreat.
A dog and a cat sharing a basket.
A caged parrot and a bowled fish,
sharing a tiny table.

Wars arise for lesser things,
to overdo the sign for an undoing.      How many times?
How mathematics helps us to know ourselves.

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Copyright © 2018 Fernando Pérez All rights reserved
from A Song of Dismantling
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission