Mohs Scale

Mohs Scale

1.

It’s always a test, always the grail

still dusty from the future, your nail in the soft of it

the light pours back desert rose rapport

of lumens, skin-light, a bale of color nuzzled

in the empty barn, a boy hiding from the war

another test is to be a girl

bravely unplug the night-light and ask

now how many fingers am I holding up.

2.

I don’t trust me at all

introspection is a test I administer

at the moment you pass, no test

no life; existence is enough he said

with a piece of dark to measure

oneself go change everything, crystal

every giant has in her apartment at least one

heavy as plaster of Paris scratch right through it

a city on your finger-tips, Venice, purgatorio

of one-way doors, lovely maze of you

never the same, never the shame of same

these old hands you’ve touched new again.

3.

One is plenty, is more

limerance or Broadway

of the mind this scrap you found in all of us

‘next time’ or some such gibberish

lipstick smear, ochre you can almost hear

the word trapped in every kiss

the mind is a map pasted on the other side

of this wall, printed crease of lips, any, thick with secrets

unfold sound, hold up your copy and match what you hear

what do we share but being more than we are, but being

this crystal out of deepest time

pouring from a sky of fertilizer.

4.

Anything could scratch you a voice especially 

you can hear it in this stone

a man with no hat pretending to be lost 

the need to be touched is the scale of skin

I carry these measurements because you’re a Virgo

no data but hand on knee, the sun waddling in

still radiant from a night on the town, 

you wanted something intellectual but didn’t know feeling is itself

the expansion of consciousness clowns walking down the hospital isle 

walk farther than the light “the light beyond the light”

where something like air and air but one is heavier alternatingly

acrobats heal themselves on the tightrope of the wind across the river through your hair.