For once

1.
Failed, pale, carved-out canvas of a man that relents, and in so relenting, does not suppress what he ought to--

...& the intellectuals said--Hey son, look down, look up, look around--but they never spoke. They weren't close. That isn't love!

Love by what I mean by words I mean
love, a thing like a lantern in the dark, drake
that mourns the moonlight fading, an arc
of being discovered once discovered again
something you'll call a cliche
a niche a mismatch a clan a calm breeze
a canal, a mode of mysticism
a way of matching like with like
a way of being
a way of living.
You already know.

2.
That isn't what I meant. I know the answer I know
how to live. Sometimes. I know
the way of the arrow, how it flies
and in so flying does. It hasn't been
sent by anybody. Which is the same as saying
it has been. Shot thus, landing here. What
a way of putting words together, you'll
say. What a way of siphoning sand. I had
hands and I lost them, by way of the sleeve,
by way of the bands of color that stripe
my dusty dark forehead my
time for lingering my time
for hungering the minute
is now.

Come closer. He isn't here yet.
You are listening to yourself.