Excerpts from IF AN ELSEWHERE (The Burrow)
 
Also Outside
  
 
At the crossroads
a wayward gesture 
forwarding us on
to a selfsame burrow 
waiting for those who describe
 
This burrow’s night or the hourless place or the unplaced hour
or indirection or out of place & in time with 
or whenever holed up with B 
in B’s home, B’s, or
B’s burrow, B’s
her along with us
being P & me
 
Our burrow practicing 
at origins 
& like that
 
B’s dwelling, this burrow, she occupies much 
thought also much planning, an all expense 
of energy is the understatement she details 
 
Save for the momentary subterranean
stillness though inexorably 
broken by her own deception 
by her owning description & intersections
 
For if B be growing old, be getting 
on not as strong as most 
as the others, those others, not an us, not a her either, but
in particular those who are all 
enemy are countless 
not even excepting the tiny ones 
insignificant pips 
whose work B benefits from 
for in slender ways devouring just enough 
& no more
 
Wherefore, our motto, once being B’s mantra
May we be omnia contra omnis
May we both unthing our abode & belong there
She who gestures & who signals
if ever possible in the consummation of burrowing—B’s own home—but  not yet she signals
 

The Making of Us
  
 
In reflection & in sleep
loosening B toward those poor wanderers 
who we once were, B, P, & me, the exceptions
so beings excepted from them having become
the we who then became an us a B & a P & a me
 
Along the forest paths 
along the distant roadways 
& in the woods deep 
within our woods describing not
those others or these elses
those wood wandering them
who must crawl into piles of leaves 
for relief from the cold or who 
pile up with bands of comrades
there yet unawares delivered to 
all the perils & threatening 
forms from within & without
in concert symbiotically witlessly waiting
 
This is what P will describe 
in precious detail 
when next we meet & 
I then will record for 
B incising while next & 
when forcing the lines 
into which & not who
 

Fearing Words
  
 
     But as B 
well knows & as B has 
recounted to me so often & to P
the others are not only just 
outside or also those whose element is 
B’s very homestead just as much 
as B’s & B’s fear being equally
theirs more no less than ours 
or anybody else’s 
 
     For this then is 
what most needs describing
already from the first word 
fearing as words fear  
casting out letters here
there lest all be lost which 
is not already a loss or 
worth the losing

Experimental Burrow

  
B digs one. 
Obviously far from the real one, her entrance. 
B digs it B size. 
P & I observe that B seems to be digging our own graves quietly giggling nice & snug in our beds, lined & sealed of course with moss just like the real one is. 
Creeping in to close it, covering it completely B sleeps under B’s mossy ersatz blanket. 
Later, B patiently watches, B waits, B’s private vigilance long & short spells at every & any hour, day & night. 
We have seen this move in the past, being P & me. 
We wait nonetheless with great excitement for the instant, that moment, when B flings off the moss & rises from B’s experimental hole. 
It never disappoints. 
No, never. 
 
When B shares observations from the experiment, they are mixed, good & bad. 
So we debate, we weigh, we elaborate, we iterate, we play out different scenes, games & dramas with which forms, fits, matters, moorings, anchors & landings. 
All our rotting & obliging matters. Their magnetism & elasticity are exciting. 
When B looks with inattentiveness at the phrases we three find ourselves susceptible. Ungovernably fucked & happy. 
B pants, puffs, bustles. 
We ignore what we can’t contest. 
B’s observations from the burrow experiment always beyond yes or no. Akin to our game of plus & minus, bidding starts with an ask of or for, a bid as appeal. The game’s literally not possible or just the literal play for our snug hidden parts. 
Today we call our game: the Impasses. 
Here the pluses & minuses correlate nicely. 
Here the winner loses to win also nicely. 
Also known as the Game of Exceptions to Imaginary Problems & their Solutions. 
 
What a fellowship of anomalies we are, fellows, sitting around our experimental burrow, dot connecting like a discipline for living, from so & so to so & so, where self-explanation is thankfully nothing, where compulsive naming meets at a bull’s eye resisting determination, shadow explanations oscillating with wind-tossed moss & marginal details, & with the dust of worlds.
 

Bending Outside to In then Back
  
 
It pleases B by equal measure
to narrate who & what remains 
whose ruins what demise where faintness 
who murmurs without returning 
the remaining the detouring 
like echoes into winds like
sighing at grief’s disposal
that passivity I suggest while
P nods assent to this abstention 
B prefers to decide upon
what I never had to have & even had to
abdicating long ago then the working out 
of abandoning of relinquishing 
that refusal that refuses to refuse
 
But that’s not to B’s taste
with these stores & piles to accord
to reckon & to account
 
Bent in reply B says
let time take its time
in a whisper B says the hours 
seduce our ears where hours separate 
the bones from us, that is
the hours could destroy all
with ease & everything without 
risk to what the hours are
 
B leads by renunciation of B’s 
own, our us, arbitrarily altering plots 
to suit the ends 
likewise time’s & ours 
& here I lapse alongside my friend B to admire the theory brilliant & flimsy but then P 
summons me with an invitation not to be snubbed
that is how denial precipitates the bones
of catastrophes elaborated 
by B that detour to turn without 
return & I reply
 

The Enemy 
  
 
We agree B’s are 
myriad &
we all affirm the enemies & their accomplices are
still more numerous we admit are 
countlessly 
multiplying so that B 
becomes dizzy who in a rare retreat
lapses alongside 
P & me where
no alarm could 
alert us now
 
May there be hours 
in which that enmity
might be assuaged 
when B raises above 
destruction—moves 
sideways to harm—plays 
dead in an instant freezes 
to a marmoreal still 
 
But no
we know false
assurance is the greatest 
risk a threat greater than 
the multiple perils 
calculating & figuring 
together the enemies 
their allies accomplices in sum
 
What profitless hope 
for steadfast protection 
if we were to be 
so assured & not in
this half experiment 
half enigmatic ground
when we three B, P, & I 
want only to watch 
over ourselves & 
over B, P, & me
where we be omnia 
& omnis alternatingly