
the well offers no echo
for the truth to rise upon
to allow her to step screaming
from the water’s cold depths
to shatter the infinite mirrors
where we live out our lives
(November 1. 2020)
the well offers no echo
for the truth to rise upon
to allow her to step screaming
from the water’s cold depths
to shatter the infinite mirrors
where we live out our lives
(November 1. 2020)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
I write as I have
for years—I have,
through time, come
to understand:
I write to write,
doubting praise, I write
in silence to silence.
(May 14, 2019)
“chiseller of inaccuracies”
–Fernando Pessoa
I would not speak
if I knew what to say.
There would be no need
to form words around
an unrealized dream.
It is the unsaid
which must be given
shape; which calls us
from its shapeless dark
to speak into existence
what we cannot know.
Yet, I know so little
about so much, I must
speak about it all.
I start where I am
which is always here.
First, I must listen,
discern the shapes
before I can speak.
My words carve out
what is there
from what is not
as the silence unfolds
a new kind of truth.
(August 23, 2018)
–Chicago Art Institute, July 13
slow shapes turn about
each other as they turn
together through larger
fluidic constraints
the whole turns slower
partly to the left until
a pause then moves
in a manner to the right
others speaking Japanese
move through the space pause
take a picture and move on
changing the room’s rhythm
which changes the slow shapes’
turn about each other and me
like stepping into a still pool
deep in a primal cave—
you slip into this silence:
the light breathes, a liquid
luminescence, in slow
arrhythmic breaths,
and you are changed—
you see what you want
to see; desire, fear, hope
flicker across the surface
like faces of the dead,
hesitant and fleeting
until you see only your self
stripped of all significance
(July 2, 2018)
the words were a way out
between the rigid definitions,
the expectations carved in cant
the words slipped along fault
line’s edges; the incongruous fissured
like water through the undefined
the words wore meaning there,
bare and taut, shrugging off
all social niceties for love
the words were love for the world:
the laughter of the sun rippling
the horizon further each day
words were a way to a salvation
from what I was not to become
(June 25, 2018)
“It embroiders us with error.”
–Christian Bok
as error
becomes change
warhol’s prints
print awry
a chance shifts
with each pass
its being’s
okay then
as so you
each morning
wake anew
yet again
to sleep deep
into you
until all’s
written out
and what was
said is said
as always
an old tale
only heard
in passing
(November 9, 2017)