State of Being Verbs (revised)

I lit candles like one would for a séance

a glow to fill the drop out of sound,

breathe and break

voice must slow
tongue detained behind teeth

a hairline fracture seeps
settling a divide.

were we to be ice skaters skidding
to an edge

we wouldn’t be saying a word
to build back the world

were there road enough to drive
we wouldn’t know how anymore

Being as I am
I would point a broken kaleidoscope at the day
unresolved and eroding
the system of mirrors and symmetry.

Being as I am
you see me as though
I have been carved by a storm,

Should I be a lot of things
I am not

I would not do
would not have done

what I shouldn’t.

if I could whittle your form
from a bar of soap and invoke voodoo,

I wouldn’t.

were we to be a lot of things
I can not,

were we to be a lot of things
you can not,

we could eat soft pretzels in a shopping mall,
we could go to an obscure festival
at the edge of a severe weather report
sit in my car until the rain stops
and win pocket knives at a balloon darts booth

We could, I wouldn’t put it past us

To emerge on the thirty-seventh warm day of the year
being
like we could,

Were an entire universe to be imagined,
I wouldn’t put it past us.

Were I to be a masochist,
and you a plot device,

If I could cast you
as no more than a character


We might.