(responding to a phone conversation with an old geology lab partner, the purchase of a set of 4-blade razors at the United Supermarket in the High Plains town of Dumas, TX, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s announcement that the Williston Basin’s Bakken Shale may contain 3 billion barrels of oil)
The razor touches you, so you say –
infinite reversals & I’m in the play;
we’ve leased the trend and beyond
where I breathed the prairie, laid the sondes;
lips, nose, eyes scraping the infinite
laid bare, my dear, the anatomy of this planet.
Warm, pure, boom-time aura
to be not yet 21 yet in the laboratory of our futures:
future “lost love” concept spilled across the desk
plagioclase, orthoclase, staurolite twins
specimens of perfection
the heart throbbing in a wrist
the past pounding in my mind’s eye
your razor cutting close, me
you, talking into the deepest night
drilling into the deepest formations
of light, dark “I need you”
like Hamlet: a splintered objective correlative
razor the place I need to be
cut out what grows rough, shambling, ill-hued
& you, reduced to running with a blown-out knee
& me, chipping the samples, the outcrop
we’re still shaving reality like hope
so close it bleeds