Nonkilling 6 | Hunger

Part I: Nonkilling 6

Winter raging

The color gone, hands were blue and cold

A recitation I slowly read you Tomb for Anatole:

He was eight years old

A dead child is no

Occasion for a song

Where did I go wrong?

Part II: Hunger

When they say face facts, disobey that

There’s singing still left to be done

They still can’t name that, fragrant

Wind rolling off a corpse

Until the day that you play back the tape that you made

Record your mother saying every word

Pronounce the gray that

The rains had brought over the sun

Like a veil to suffocate the earth

But hunger is first

And I could feel in my body time rushing in

The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin

The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong

Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

I remember snow

Saw it fall

Watched a child learn, the word ‘nightfall’

And sleep because it’s sad, or not sleep at all

I learned the word "forever" from Demerol

I let my body go: I feed the thaw

Like jumping off a cliff, but never falling

A dust finer than smoke

A memory in my throat

A flame that pulses cold

A faraway echo ...

And I could feel in my body time rushing in

The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin. The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong: Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

And I could feel in my body time rushing in

The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin. The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong: Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

I remember snow

Saw it fall

Watched a child learn, the word ‘nightfall’

And sleep because it’s sad, or not sleep at all

I learned the word "forever" from Demerol

I let my body go: I feed the thaw