there's got to be more below the surface
Late at night when you cannot sleep
and you step silently through the house;
or lost in thought driving to work
and you do not notice your normal exit,
then the niggling whispers gain a clarity
that cannot be partitioned or pardoned.
No little boxes filled with secrets to be
placed locked in other larger boxes
appear to safely hide your face within.
When all your variant stories disentangle,
and fall away like petals on a dying rose,
how do you begin to confess the lies
manifested through accidental negligence?
How do you begin to open the sarcophagus
you have for so long hidden within? How do
you even begin to begin to live again?
(July 23, 2022)
“the descent beckons”
——- William Carlos Williams
Despite, or maybe because of,
my meds, I can feel the fall
as it begins. A slow drift
like a leaf, or dandelion,
it lifts for a moment, twirls,
then stumbles, and falls again
into a dark silent lake without
a ripple to disturb the surface.
There is little to do, but wait.
Wait without despair,
for despair is a weight which
drags one deeper into the dark.
So, I wait for a new light to break
across a horizon I cannot see.
Like raw clay upon a wheel,
I twist decades’ old regrets
to shape my truth with desire
to be some other than I am.
As if life’s embarrassment
could be stripped away, like skin
cut loose in great bloody skeins,
free from doubt’s infinite knots:
Tangled in old fishing lines,
I am trapped within myself.
The only recourse is guilt
inlaid along my arms’ veins
like intricate red nets flung
across a river’s slow wash.
(November 4, 2021)
“till we turn to see
who you were, who you are, everpresent, vivid
luminous dust”
-Denise Levertov
Like wolves feeding on a fresh kill
steaming in the snow, each dead second
is pulled apart. No matter the effort,
time disallows the past to continue
fully formed. The future devours us
leaving little tufts of fur and bone bits
to decorate our current troubled paths
and explain away our broken sorrows.
I am hungry for something I don’t know,
a freedom from imposed obligations,
an escape to a place I am not known.
Yet, where I am, and who I’ve been tangle
like the strings of old puppets in a crate,
waiting for someone to haul them away.
(September 28, 2021)
“what I lack is myself”
—Susan Howe
The door’s full like words
in an open mouth,
blotting out the space
it opened onto.
An entrance becomes a wall,
an allowed space disallowed,
as keys and locks
become ritual.
Such small sacrifice
the tongue becomes,
burning clear
any lost syllables.
Nothing’s left to say;
everything’s unsaid.
I’m lucky not to drown,
second by second, as I
walk down the street—
what with all the lies
and recriminations
I mouth, then swallow,
like a gluttonous beast
devouring itself wholly.
Perhaps it’s fate not luck
which keeps me afloat? But that
requires some god to blame,
and explain the curses directed
daily over rosary beads, like
mendicants to a self long lost.
(September 5, 2021)
indecisive and insecure
I am on an edge
no cliff nor rooftop
from which to leap
more marginal
more like myself
a collection of questions
laced down a ragged page
I take a moment
to pull myself close
to gather myself
into a tighter pile
of misunderstandings
to tie myself to a series
of questionable knots
strung across the night
with a sense of frivolity
like lights at a garden party
or a noose in a lonesome room
swinging beneath a bare bulb
(March 25, 2021)
subtext