Rainhead

A man so much bigger than anyone ive every met
stretches like a flattened limousine of water
forming in the driveways curvature,
a slow in-puckering, like a heart that beats once every 5 years.
How if the whole neighborhood was the back of a single fish,
                    --so much pushing it up, so much holding it back—
water wouldn’t be water then, not after all we’ve said about it
with dams and drainage, spinning it til it gave up its secrets,
as if the fish could be taken from the water as clouds are always at the tops of trees
if only in sketch form, if only in hands held against the shadow of the moon

The raindrop coming to split me was slow as a bullet, silent as midnight
compressed into an arrow—
                    bodies will grow; bodies will be denied--
when most anybody can go into a store and get legs three inches longer,
or do-it-yourself enhancements to blood circulation & muscle efficiency,
A car reappearing 30 years later as if nothing had happened to it
but all the numbers on the dashboard have been replaced with alien symbols,
symbols that our most ancient languages were smudged graffiti of.
if the car lets you in, the car will start

ive seen rain so thick no one bothered to break it into drops, flowing threads
coiling as soon as the drains jammed, not from blockage but from abundance,
so much rain what falls in 5 minutes takes 2 hours for us to recover.
i paint with water. i train water to go to the thirsty plants first, to smell the status of root hairs
coz some flowers think wetter is brighter.
water does not feel responsible for its distribution, bursting when it can,
knitting clouds during lockdown. Water sentenced to recycle.
time off in lakes or ponds for good behavior

in the beginning huge hunks of frozen water flew all over the universe—
some melting, some coalescing with internal gravitation, some freezing on the edges
then getting covered with the soot of system development.
water ballet of a rainstorm in zero gravity: no gravity is no planets,
gravity like news you cant keep to yourself, a social disease, pandemic without a box,
though the earth is round other worlds have steep edges,
though a brink can take so many turns, absences & shatters.

water is so social it will either join a larger wet or disappear, looking as far as it can for company
without letting go of its neighbors.
                              sewage expressways with trained rats reporting traffic jams.
names written on water, oil licking the epidermis about to crust with carbon and collapse.

i live near sudden changes. The absence of water is dirt.
Water breaks rock. Rock paves soil, mudslides engulf cars and homes,
the dust of trees traps water below the sky.

                              i wish my hair was antennas,
exchanging kisses and farts with everything that flies, living and dead,
native manmade or yet to decide.
                              Some days my body feels like a canoe sewn shut,
built to receive then not allowed to. i am a scoop. The air is so busy with information,
as my clothes are always swapping molecules with what passes through them
so when i’m naked again, i’ve changed, been altered
like a message going around the room in a language that’s almost mine