Do not speak, the storm is coming on a string

Reality is an erasure · Track 7

The big bang expands darkness
one body at a time
making space
its own.
I heard the cosmic background music
It sounded like a
trumpet

Its deep call shattering inside churches’ walls

Let there be light breaking
in geometries
until my skin answers
crawling

The call falters in the words of a poet
it recovers
in the body alphabet of a sign dancer
hands and face shaped in a woman
interloper between mediums and meanings
The herald calls her trumpet
and the universe expands
sitting bodies atop standing ones.
Settling in patterns like the tiles of the Alhambra
until the maze
loses itself.

Before the word there was music

When sounds make bombs, unhappy
at the sight of babies sucking the tits of rubble
the universe retracts.
Yet olive trees raise branches
in the zig zag scratches of a violin

The trumpet calls deeper
washing silence
The world knits its wounds
looking for forms
to hold a moment in a line
silence talks
in pulses

The tree grows in the space between
death and the firefly
and the world
grows rocks
to steady
the breath
of its cello

Why talk when the world sings?

Because of death
we live
the world re-forms into
the eye of a flower
and the woman speaks face and fingers
on her dress
paged black.
Her alphabet moves
she stills—
silence

Our children spill in curves of light
and we tremble

Yaz,
herald of the Big Bang
recalls her notes
But are there words to carry the heartbeat of a universe?
Its blood is light,
waves
its vessels,
listen with the skin of your lips
to its tremors.

But do not speak.
The storm is coming
on a string

Live Performance