Category: abstract

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Infinite Watched Pot (a reading)

Infinite Watched Pot

“That is, if you write it has it happened twice”

—Michael Palmer, Notes for Echo Lake

I woke and now it is now; the sun’s setting.

Was the writing the thing that happened?

Would today happen without being written?

Are they two events or one?

I see something—

like a car crash,

or water boiling on the stove.

One’s disconnected,

one’s intentional, possibly

even a causation; for example;

I’m hungry, so

I hop in the car for a burger.

She was in a hurry. It was

raining. She slams through a yellow light.

The driver in front of me dies

on the wet street. Or,

I’m still hungry. I hold dry

pasta knowingly, and watch

as the tiny bubbles form

on the bottom of the pot.

Did anything happen?

I am hungry, and will be

each time you read this,

even if I was the driver

who died, or I just wrote

it down; even if something

more than this

was in my thoughts

as I waited for water

to boil.

(May 3, 2020) 

Within a Dream

The sound of my last dream

will be silence: the silence

of fog, the silence of fear.

My last dream will echo

the clack of high heels

on wet London streets.

My last dream will be warm

like your bare skin beneath

my hands late at night.

My last dream will linger

over the thousand, thousand

kisses: your lips soft,

warm, hungry for more.

My last dream will be free

of doubt, secure in coherence

with all the lines blurred.

My last dream will not wake

to return me to a place

it can never know.

My last dream will be

a harbor, a sanctuary, 

a last whispered breeze.

(October 15, 2019)

As He Peered over his Glasses

She spoke without preface,

as if sh knew him:

each sentence a non-sequitar

even to itself; no beginning

no end, no predicate

to bend into an open heart.

Askew to his position,

she formed a fulcrum

with no place to stand

like surf far out to sea

crashing against itself.

Until in a froth of inaction,

he drowned, swallowing his words,

as if they mattered.

(August 21, 2019)

In the Blood

The lie of my truth

visors the angle

of my descent.

I have no face,

but reflection,

a mirror

to lace assumption’s

discordance.

My flesh contains

shattered selves—

a prismatic array,

where each shard

bends an image

of itself into another.

This truth lies

along an edge

of broken glass;

it slices the air

with ribbons of light,

like tall grass

cuts children’s legs

as they flee through

the last summer fields.

(August 15, 2019)

stucco

like pressed flowers

found in an old book

the world grows flat

long passages of white

on white– white sand

below a white sky

holding a white sun

a black line defines

the horizon like a closed eye

there’s no sleep in this noise

no rest from the silent mundane

oozing across a glass pane

the snail’s slow slime

becomes the air we traverse

connecting the featureless day

to the homogeneous night

clouds press low like stones

(July 24, 2019)