OUT OF BODY

San Francisco, 2012

standing in front of my naked teeth

the ocean washes my mouth through the eyes

what you see is closer than it appears

holding multiple search parties for remembered faces & voices

i hear a Greyhound fly through the redwoods

stretching towards new moments

new scenes new kicks new women & visions

when was the last time you really saw yourself

at one with all this anyways?

having robbed countless strangers of their secret mind whispers

for his last meal

the last greedy man on Earth

will have a decision between food or more dollars—

don’t tell the cabbie in 1993 but i’ve given up

reasoning with other people’s excuses 

as to why this city changes every time i leave

(laps around sound in the hands of the unearthed)

the mouth night barks

the mouth night barks

jailer O jailer

         mayor & president—

escaping the answers of jazz

i’ve come to thrill your daughters

& sell your tooth paste

back to the unsaid Word

reason being the uncharted wind

the dying stars give motion to lives

touched by simultaneous unspoken graces

breathing longitudes beyond unseen hands

giving & taking some jolting joint smoke

from the mind of a voice 

unfastening glances atop your monuments

—you could see the ocean

but for all that money

blocking the view

HUMMING BIRD

easily the wind comes

sweeping through every cranium in the valley

mountain people rejoice

at the thought of ant hills drowning in the past

ancestors bring past lives to their knees

when oak tree refuses your solemnity again

three times you will tempt me

on the third time you are denied

every woman of the night you’ve ever scorned

since 1999 will return to you at once

with their hands out & oleander in their eyes

& lotus blossoms in their cheeks

with mouths like gravel pits

spitting your lies back to you

if every miner from Appalachia could retire tomorrow

maybe we could finally get started on that search

party for Nikola Tesla’s lost notebooks

the secret oaths of lawmakers, storming my oatmeal 

each morning the sun arrives at my doorstep

with an icepick & a box of matches

to never tell another soul what i’ve seen

by way of metal & flesh

hope & fear

earth & water

love & hatred

now wouldn’t that be the song of ages…

D.C. Wojciech is the founder of Anvil Tongue Books, and is the author of The Longest Breath (Anvil Tongue, 2020). He resides in the Sonoran desert.