As the old world swirls
in laconic siroccos of doubt
flinging sand adroitly
into a warm Mediterranean air
how do I stand still with silence
aware only of this moment’s breath
how do i ignore the nattering pedants
who brandish their wet cliches
like limp wands twined from roses
as petulant proof of their originality
how do i negotiate the spaces
i must traverse without
slagging off chunks of flesh
until the sinews abandon my bones
(October 26, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (77)
the abstract
takes shape
along an edge
a plane
teased
to a form
more tangible
than shadows
in the grass
beneath the stars
(July 14, 2020)
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)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (7)
as the creek flows past quick
minnows mouth my fingers
(January 7, 2020)
I swim toward a room.
The door is open, yet dark.
Someone is there, hidden.
I shout out vaguely
like a toothless dog
growling at shadow.
*
In this dream, I am other;
not the dream where I see
myself as some other:
I’m a mobius strip
made of my flesh
rendered to a game
where dice clack quietly
into the thinning air.
(December 31, 2019)
Our words hold close,
unhinge, this dream–
a singular
translucent dawn.
Narrative fragments
float around a room,
flotsam and jetsam
without back story,
without connection
to a set array
defining truth, lies
into difference.
An organic flux
tendrils arabesques
along fractal lines
until we shatter.
(November 11, 2019)
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)
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)
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)
Yielding more
than simple correspondences,
or letters marked in a ledger,
words bend fields
through which we see
distortions and clarities
reflected like sunlight
in a waterfall’s spume.
they reveal and cloak
certainties in our unease
with what we should believe
as true, and what we know
to be a lie as we speak.
(July 29, 2019)
