Final Note
Con/Jur/d, 4/30/2021

“I’ll have it,
as spicy as you would
make it for yourself,”
the place was called Phuket, (restaurant,
not city)
after all and she and I were bonded
by closing times, and little-
deaths, the ones, no one notices
happened, tricked by ill-
usions of continuance,

Everything, immediately, 
irrevocably different -- 
The Heat, the heat squared, 
veering, accelerating progressions,
imaginary numbers
sweat, becoming quicksand 
trapping this body, from toenails to hair
follicles (growing, growing), a
matted, gluing  expanse delineated 
holy-perspiration. We’ve been here

before, are always still there, like
the dance floor, where go, going, gone 
the bottom,

drops
out,

every note, dragon scales, pulsating
precious nets of light suspended from,
branching from, a spine, an articulated
skeleton whose hollows are filled with stars,

we’re flying, the anatomical map has awoken,
become, a territory whose coastline can never -
ever be measured,

we, you, me, should be asking,

“What am I? How am I? Where am I?”

When Home is the answer, 
it precludes the question.
Why bother 
asking when 
you know?

Look how simple,
laughing, laughing, laughing
only invert figure and ground.,

Suddenly taste: 
Thai Basil -- Lemon Grass -- Shitake 
the Red on the Bell Pepper -- the delicate
scales of Anchovies crushed 
for Fish Sauce -- Galangal invokes
a mist rising above a steaming waterfall, 
hidden beneath webs, Banana leaves a heavily
scented flowering vine -- is that spinach? --
didn’t know jalapenos could cool like this
dark-green moss bedecked
by refractive droplets of water -- Tom Yum? -- 
or paintings aligned 
singularly,

in well-lit rooms painted  gallery white -- a constellation of
bassbeat suns, gravity-waves, undulating umami guitars,
sweet/bitter synthesizers, salty voices, whole planets 
swallowed by drums of unknown size and origin --
broth or wormhole? --
dancing or eating? shirt stuck to chest? --
there’s a mirror -- who’s looking? 

There it is.

The Note played
by the Original Birth
still echoing when
we’ve gone,

back.

Did we go?

“I’m going to the bar to get water,
don’t worry, 
I’ll be 
back.”