L
The beginning squeezes back
like a hermit crab retreats
deeper into its ever-tightening
shell. This moment opens
into and closes off the last
and next, as we each pretend
we are a cumulative consequence.
God, if extant, does not care
about time and its causes, the click
and clack of the marble rolling
through preordained mechanics,
nor the butterfly landing on her hand.
I fear pat endings’ homilies,
as if someone turns off the lights.
(February 15, 2019)
We exist in mirrors
And shadows, the curve
Of the maze wall.
One way’s through;
One way’s return.
Devoid of shadows,
Absent reflection,
Each moment’s alone
In cold clarity.
Memory has no place
To go, so must be
Continually reshaped
In the turn and return
Of worry and doubt.
(January 10, 2018)
I cannot stop
thinking: thought
takes tangent
from thought
like traces
of bubble chamber
particles, arcs
spin angles skew
to the intent
as if even
a tendency
toward a line
could be maintained
for any strand
to cohere.
(January 6, 2018)
(in progress)
(23)
Lights break auras
As night deepens
The rain. The solstice
Grows closer through the dark;
Grim days shorten.
(28)
Half-way back
To summer’s long heat—
In afternoon hours,
It hurts to step
Outside as if someone
Near waits with knives.
(14)
Patient enough now
To watch all this unfold
Into spring.
(40)
Outside, another cold day:
Most of the leaves have fallen
From the sycamore outback;
Its white bark stands in contrast
To the stark grey sky. Beauty
Lives with our view.
(43)
Nietzsche said, among other things,
We experience only ourselves—
Even when I shift toward you,
It remains me who must see
The shadow which falls starkly
Between us on the floor.
(36)
If no one hears the Eliot allusion,
Does it make a sound?
Or should one pretend
A studied nonchalance
To carry one through the late afternoon?
(39)
Thus, an old ritual snickers
To a close, the porch lights
Turned on, the curtains
Drawn. I feel safe,
Less exposed, contained
With the pattern—
A spider moves toward motion.
(34)
We’ve woven our disparate dreams,
And become subsumed beneath the totality
Like ocean waves rolling upon themselves
Far from shore.
(28)
My anger sits at a distance,
It does not go away—
It whispers discontent
Like whip’s end striking wet flesh.
(41)
Ubiquitous as fear,
The air tightens
Without provocation.
Yet, still we sing,
Sing our song,
As if redemption
Can be gathered
Like bags of wet cotton
Blotched with blood.
“Desire is a moment with no way out”
–Anne Carson
I parse each moment’s possibility
Pretending the past can be reconciled
With present desires. Memory wears me
Like a palm stone smoothed from idle handling,
Until no difference exists between
Me and what I have perceived to be me.
The unstable threads interlace with all
The lies, the truth, the last dry sip of gin.
The metaphor for myself unravels:
The little that was left unsaid is said,
And the air sparkles with embarrassment.
I have built constructs out of Tinker Toys,
Vast whirligigs of simplistic ideas
To clack and flail in an ignorant wind.
(December 6, 2018)
“but I was only bruised”
—Denise Levertov
I thought you were a butterfly,
But I was just a construct.
I thought I was an open wound,
But you were not a surgeon.
I thought you were my subtext,
But I was just a shallow novel.
I thought I had healed,
But still I wrote this poem.
(November 27, 2018)
He could not sleep
In the dream,
So he wandered,
Without moving
Room to room,
Worrying details,
While obliquely
Hiding
His traces.
Until like a flower’s
Augury For love’s
True answer, he strips
Off the flavors
Of the dying night,
And stands barren,
Without possibility
Within the omnipresent
Never-ending day.
(November 1, 2018)
